and magnanimously open minds, all so celebrated in the nowmonopolizedncultural communications networks. We standnaccused of wishing to suppress the humanitarian impulse innman, but no one mentions the defaced humanitarianism of thencultures in which homo has been replaced by ego, where thenwealth of humanness that took millennia to accumulate hasnbeen pulverized into cheap solipsism. Since social perfectionismnhas ended in gulags, all those who hate the bourgeoisncivilization now have a more condemnable enemy than laissezfeirencapitalism—^namely the normative systems of valuesnwhich we have inherited from Judeo-Christian and HeUenicnwisdom. In our time, the “progressive” theorists no longer insistnon head-to-head struggles with mechanisms of productionnor political structures. They pervert them. They have learnednthat they cannot defeat the human need for religion and tradition—sonthey declare them archfoes of some fictitious modernitynand innocence. Being unable to redefine goodnessnaccording to their vacuous gospel, any grand, comprehensivendesign for civilization eludes them. Thus they are forced tondraw constantly from our inheritance—and they venomouslyncorrupt and disfigure it in the process of borrowing. Whereasnour wisdom tells us simply that the supreme assets of civilizationsnare not social blueprints but people: if people are goodnand live wisely, civilizations thrive.ni3o what are we fitting for? I would propose that we batdenfor the hiunan mind or—^as they put it—consciousness. Wenfight for the soul; they fight for a society which they trust willndetermine the soul. The mere feet that they still believe innsuch a triviality in spite of five milleimia of experience to thencontrary, is consoling. All philosophies promise to improveneither man or his fete or both. Liberals claim that by betteringnhis material condition, they’ll make man (soul included)nbetter, and his destiny controlled. We cling to the idea that bynasking man to be better, we may—^possibly—^ameliorate society,nand thus, perhaps, man’s destiny. In the vocable “perhaps”nis the crux of our conflict with the liberals. This is why theynhate us and deny us the right to talk about man, his fete, hisnsouL They cannot pardon incertitude: they know no hesitationnabout their piecapxs, which are nonnegotiable, as is the liberals’ndemand to do with and to man only what they deem propernand just. Our wisdom, therefore, makes us suspect that theynare ordinary totalitarians and should be dealt with as such.nBut does our reliance on the conditional drown us in thenswamp of relativism? Not quite. The conservative wisdom asksnus not to budge on three issues. 1 happen to think that ourncivilization could not survive if it were robbed of these fundamentalnnotions: repentance, normalcy, and skepticism. Yet atnthis juncture of history, the robbery is going on fiall speed.nAtonement is derided as superstition: politicians and writersnwho are implicated in murders are hailed as more humane ifnthey do not redeem their sins. Normalcy is ridiculed as a psy­n• CONSERVATIVE WISDOM & MODERN CULTURE •nchological fossil, or as abuse through statistics, while doubtnabout the liberal vision is forcibly banned from the nationalnculture. But conservative wisdom informs us that an organizednand free society is doomed without the consequence of clearnthinking—^man’s best protection from nature, fate, and himself.nSuch clarity, in turn, is impossible without penitence, thenmarrow of moral order, without norms, our existential guideline,nwithout skepticism, our natural right to free inquiry.nThus where do we stand, with all our sagacity, in the universenof modem culture? I would venture to say: nowhere. Whatevernsublime virtue there is in our message, we have let ourselvesnbe pushed out of the territory where wisdom turns into popularnsymbols and signals. We have proved to be thoroughly ineptnwhen it comes to locating and cultivating that delicate membranenwhich separates and yet connects culture and politics;nit’s in precisely this tissue that the philosophies of life germinate,nwhere complex social conditioners form a civil personnand his moral imperatives, where, actually, the future ofnrepentance, normalcy, and free inquiry is decided. True,nDostoevski, Henry James, Conrad, Proust, Kafl«a, Eliot, Faulknern—^the founding fathers of modem consciousness—^were allnbona fide conservatives. So were D. W. Griffith, John Ford,neven Charlie Chaplin—^that old fellow traveler—^if his artisticnsentiments are measured agiainst those of current liberal criticism.nIf there are common denominators for these men’s conservatism,nthey would be their postulate of explanation, theirnsense of logical norm, their hierarchy of values, all of whichnwould make it rather unprofitable to turn The Sound and thenFury into a Broadway musical, or Lord Jim into a pornographicncomic strip, as can be done with any Vidal or Vonnegut.nThrough those grandiose liberal achievements—feminismnand the mechanization of sexuality (ludicrously called “a revolution”)—anuniverse of feeling has been lost, and it nownseems that both women and philanderers desperately wish tonretrieve it. Life itself metes out punishments that conservativenwisdom can rightiy foretell as the consequences of false ideas.nYet we cannot creatively articufete an antidote. If ideology is andirty word by which we all live, only the Uberals know how tonbenefit from it: they keep issuing effective behavioral ukasesnwhich we try unsuccessfiilly to combat with tedious and tritensermons.nJt^hilosophy without wisdom is like jazz without syncopation.nThis is why—^rather than with scholastics and materialistsn—^I’d have a dry martini or two with Socrates, Pascal, Dr.nJohnson, and Voltafre. Yes, with Voltafre, the closet modemnconservative who fought the despotism of privilege like wenfight the despotism of perverted labels—which alone wouldnhave made him a contributor to the Chronicles of Culture ifnhe lived today. So if, Hke Lenin, we ask: “What’s to be done?”nmy answer would be: “First, refurbish our prescription forncontinued on page 37nnnJuly 1983n