logical, clear-thinking, and persuasive publicists in America,nor Arnold Beichman—one of the most captivating ones?nHas any reader of Esquire or Nation ever heard anythingnabout the distinguished American philosophers Albert JaynNock or Frederick Wilhelmsen? Why is it that the onlynopinion on hard-working small businessmen comes fromnBurbank, or Manhattan, where smart alecks are making fortunesnby turning the moral satisfactions of decent, hard workninto a rat race by means of derisive one-liners? Everybodynknows that Goldwater is a conservative, but nobody knowsnthat Faulkner was our greatest conservative writer. We arensternly instructed by the press and show biz that love is anliberal idea, and faithfulness a conservative one. But is lovennot ennobled by faithfulness? By preaching anticapitalismnand chintzy hedonism in the same breath, the liberal culturenhas lost any title to the moral representation of hard-working,nlaw-abiding, normalcy-and-common-sense-craving America.nHowever, the near monopoly of cultural means, to whichnthe liberals cling by the almost totalitarian method of ignoringnvoices of protest, endows them with impunity.nWhich makes the two-culture syndrome in America a rigidnsystem of oppression that facilitates and justifies everynabuse. To some, it may seem amusing that punk rock, withnall its beastly imbecility, caters to the elite and court culture,nwhile the music of Arthur Fiedler serves the plain folk. Thesenparadoxes are at the core of fateful social aberrations. Tremendousnamounts of money accumulate in the hands of thosenwho will use it for cultural endeavors unconcerned with thenfuture of our civilization. The pristine conviction that socialnand cultural power are still in the hands of the old financialnestablishment is an illusion. The cultural, thus the political,nstandards are now ordained by what some call the New Class.nIn the early ’50s, plenty of brainy and fiercely liberal, if notnoutrightly radical-minded people, scared stiff by McCarthy,nwent from politics into professions—labor law, publishing,netc. Within two decades, they had monopolized the opinionmakingnapparatus of the country, and gathered fabulousnwealth along the way. But their allegiances remained thensame, and today a certain Mr. Weiss, a mining tycoon, isnfinancing the Institute for Policy Studies, an overtly procommunistnresearch center. Professions whose social basis wasnthe bohemian left (stage setting, fashion photography, soundnengineering, etc.) have become sources of financial opulencenand keep “creatively” interacting with the liberal culturenand politics. The critics of the New Class, like Irving Kristol,nlocate it mostly in the academe, bureaucracy, the media;nbut what about the weight of all that money for liberal leftncauses that comes from the superaffluent Hollywood cameramennor radical disc jockeys?nSome time ago, one could read in the New York Timesn”Book Section” that now ideas matter, that intellectualnmovements are now influencing politics—Moynihan becamena U.N. ambassador in the wake of one essay. Carter was ad­n6nChronicles of Cultttrcnnnvised to read The Culture of Narcissism before preparing anspeech. But hasn’t it always been so? Didn’t ideas alwaysngenerate political events, only in slower sequence than todayn—the era of Telex and communication satellites? Aren’t thenTV anchormen and press editorialists just the tom-toms ofnthe modern idea producer, only quicker in transmitting thenwatchword to immense audiences? The high-brow culturenenamored by radicalism has been a particular beneficiary ofnthis rapid change. And, consequently, that culture has becomenthe source of the infectious moral and social bankruptcynof our time, the modern symbiosis of court and pop culturenhas turned into the wellspring of our woes.nX his brings us to perhaps the fundamental differencenbetween their culture and ours. Great art, poetry, music, ornliterature comes from the struggle against the real enemiesnof mankind: conquest, subjugation, death, cruelty, ignorance,ninsanity. It never originates in bantering with minor afflictions,ndiscomforts, boredoms, frustrations, artificially inflatednsocial “sufferings.” An epoch in which there’s nonfight for that which meets with the approval of the commonnfolk engenders a minor culture which mirrors trivia and whosenreflections are easily forgotten. When contention is mootnbecause everything is permitted, no creativity flourishes.nThe liberal culture of today seems precisely in such shape.nA reigning culture that pushes books which are nothing butnextensions of newspapers is inferior; thus—when faced withncultural propositions that speak of moral discipline—it mustncrush the latter’s superiority by totalitarian means. WhennPope John Paul II, who clearly belongs to the contemporary,nnonliberal culture, preaches antiviolence and antipoverty,nbut culls his spiritual force from principle, tradition, fidelitynto canon, he must be denounced, for he exposes the liberalnculture’s mushiness and he proves that humane goals andnprogress can be found in a conservative impulse. EverynLiterature in AmericanIn The New Yorker magazine, for more than halfna century an oasis of delicate literary finesse, we nownfind a tone of lyricism more personal than even thatnof the egocentric poets of yesteryear:n”Parting the slit in the front of his underwear, he sentnhis urine in an arch out onto the frozen ground. It glitterednin the moonlight.”nIt’s no longer her hair or lips, a nightingale or a rosenbush, that glitter in the moonlight. How could ThenNew Yorker, that prince of style, be outdistanced innthe field of modern prose? Dn