Bache. Cobbett’s modest ambition to leave his country nornworse than he found it is the political equivalent of the Hippocraticrninjunction to do no harm.rnAdversarial journalism has had a long history in Britain andrnAmerica, and some of the best of it has been reactionary: thernessavs of Swift, Johnson, and Coleridge; and in America, thernnewspaper and magazine pieces of Mencken, Nock, and JohnrnT. Flvnn, who had the honor of being repudiated by his liberalrnfriends at the New Republic and rebuffed by the “New Conservatives”rnof Mr, Buckley’s magazine.rnToday there is virtually no opposition press of any substancernin the United States. The so-called left consists of salariedrnapologists for the regime and whose only complaint is that thernNew Deal state has not yet absorbed every drop of private encrg)^rnand everv moment of private life. At the Nation, whichrnpasses for a radical publication, the editors sit around debatingrnthe wisdom of opposing Clinton with the same degree of servituderndisplayed by conservatives in the Reagan-Bush years. Forrnanvthing like reckless candor, the Nation has had to import twornEnglishmen, whose freedom consists in fulfilling Kris Kristofferson’srndefinition of having “nothing left to lose,” although thernmost radical remarks are still provided by the expatriate reactionaryrnGore Vidal. But on the right, the token opposition isrnrepresented by Clinton-bashers who can criticize the mote inrnBill’s eve but not the beam in the eyes of Reagan and Bush,rnKemp and Bennett.rn^^ I here you go again,” some of the magazine’s kindestrnX friends and most generous supporters will say, “goingrneasy on the likes of Gore Vidal, while attacking good conservativernRepublicans.” It is as an answer to these friends that myrnremarks are addressed. My first observation would be that Irnhave never claimed to be a Republican, good or otherwise. IfrnI ever had a party, it was the party of Jefferson and Calhoun,rnDouglas and Bryan, Burton Wheeler and the Dixiecrats, andrnif there is anyone in the Senate I can at all admire, it is a senatorrnof unblemished patriotism who opposed the Gulf War, arnwelfare-state libera! who proposed the first balanced budgetrnbill, the Democrat with the most conservative voting record inrnthe Senate even according to the skewed criteria of the AmericanrnConservative Union. I mean, of course, Fritz Hollings,rnwho would probably rather not be praised in our pages. In sayingrnthat I admire Senator Hollings, I do not say that I necessarilyrnagree with the political views reflected in his votingrnrecord, but that I honor him as a public man who has managedrnboth to serve his constituents and to stick to his own guns. Ofrnhow many congressmen can either be said?rn”Then what are you loyal to?” I have never claimed tornspeak for anyone but myself, but in this case I think it is permissiblernto speak of a We, consisting of my editorial colleagues,rnsome regular contributors, and a significant body of faithfulrnreaders. For all our disagreements—religious, aesthetic, andrnpolitical—most of us agree, first and foremost, that there isrnsuch a thing as truth, that some ideas can be tested, proved orrndisproved, and that not to tell the truth is the cardinal sin of thernintellectual. “Not telling the truth” is not limited to deliberaternlies, because one may know the truth and merely avoid tellingrnit, out of cowardice or exaggerated prudence. It is possible tornlie half-unknowingly, as when scholars or journalists prefer tornaccept fashionable opinion on such subjects as Bosnia or thernDred Scott decision without troubling to study the question seriously.rnChristians who compare Roe v. Wade with Dred Scottrnand journalists who speak of Serbian war crimes in Sarajevo orrnthe destruction of Dubrovnik are lying, whether they know itrnor not, because they are too lazy to redress their ignorance.rnOur first job here, then, is to try to tell the truth, whichrnmeans we cannot afford the easy-going contempt for historyrnand foreign languages displayed by the editors of the New Republic.rnWe are not perfect in this or any other respect; we dornnot come even close to realizing our own desire for accuracy,rnbut this is a degenerate age, and none of us can escape the sinrnoi acedia.rnournalists andrnpoliticians who knowrnthey are no betterrnthan prostitutes can appreciate our goodrnwill in painting scarlet letters all overrntheir resumes, and over the years wernhave been accused of enough haterncrimes to warrant an international trialrnunder the Genocide Convention.rnOur second firm belief is that truth does not change fromrnage to age and that despite variations in custom and culturernprinciples of right and wrong, discovered by ancient Jews andrnGreeks and handed down to us by our ancestors, are as true todayrnas when they were codified in the Decalogue or analyzedrnin the Nicomachean Ethics or declared by Jesus Christ. We arernnot about to change our minds on such questions as divorce,rnabortion, social security, homosexual rights, or the terrorbombingrnof Iraqi civilians, simply because some unlettered socialrnscientist or mercenary journalist or bribed think-tank presidentrngives us a new dispensation. The heavy weight of humanrnexperience is pressing down upon our shoulders, and if we werernto shift the burden, we should be crushed, morally. With MartinrnLuther we must say: “Here I stand. I can do no other.”rnWe are, first and foremost, on the right because we are of thernright and believe we are in the right. To be on the right todayrnmust mean what it has always meant: an unyielding oppositionrnto the principles of the French (and the lesser Russian) Revolutionrnand a staunch defense of our residuum of a civilizationrnthat is both classical and Christian.rnIf neither the principles of Holy Scripture nor the languagesrnand cultures of Greece and Rome (and their European successors)rninterest you, then you are reading the wrong magazine.rnIf your only interest in our culture is that it belongs to whiternpeople, go subscribe to Instauration, and if you think thatrncomplex social questions can be boiled down to a few mathematicalrnformulas of individual rights or plotted on a balancernsheet, then you should be reading any of the mass of publicationsrnprofessing faith in free markets and closed minds. Ideologuesrnshould not so much as look at Chronicles, because itrnOCTOBER 1994/13rnrnrn