right instruments by which isolation cannbe overcome and planetary cosmopolitanismnmade to triumph forever. Somen— not just paleoconservative dinosaursn— have begun to notice that the contemporarynright seems to have turnedninto an ideological Xerox of liberalism.nSome others concluded that therenwas no point in resisting anyway. WhittakernChambers came to believe that,nand he ended his life in intense andnprivate religious withdrawal, prophesyingnthe apocalypse. At another extreme,nH.L. Mencken also came to think thatnresistance to the New Deal regime wasnfutile, and he withdrew into a passivenNietzschean cynicism. “At the moment,”nhe wrote in his diary on June 1,n1942, “with the Roosevelt crusade tonsave humanity in full blast, my ideas arenso unpopular that it is impossible, as itnwas from 1915 to.1920, for me to printnthem.” Nor did it become possiblenagain in his lifetime.nBut if conservative activism was corruptive,nconservative escapism hasnproved to be no less ineffective. Leviathannis relentless. By its very nature, it isnnever defensive but always aggressive.nThe millenarian dogmas that animatenit, the vested interests that it serves, andnthe emotional resentments from whichnit breeds impel it forever to trample outnthe vineyards wherever they are found.nLeviathan decides to spread democracynand human rights throughout the worldnand plans wars in which you and yournsons (and daughters) will have to fightnand die—but never win — for principlesnand peoples you’ve never heard ofnIt blathers about “collective security,”n”disarmament,” the “international rulenof law,” “interdependence,” “globalndemocracy,” and “the New World Order,”nall of which are simply globalnversions of the same therapeutic managerialnwelfare state it has constructedndomestically. It takes your money to paynfor all the pathologies and neuroticismsnthat social managers imagine are thenHigher Civilization. Leviathan won’tnstop at the city limits and leave thensuburbs alone. There’s nowhere to runnanymore, and now that the country isnfacing recession, you couldn’t afford tonrun even if you could.nWhat this means is that the traditionalnAmerican conservative defensivenstrategy is no longer practicable and thatnthose who want to defend themselvesnagainst leviathan must go on the offensive.nThey must seek not just to restrainnpower but to gain power for themselves.nThis does not mean, as neoconserva-nAdvertise In,,,nChroniclesnA MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN CULTUREnPlace your advertisement within the pagesnof one of America’s leading cultural andnintellectual publications. Our dedicatednreadership, uncompromising editorial content,nand award-winning graphics provide annunequalled advertising opportunity.n12/CHRONICLESnFor your free information packet,nplease contact Leann Dobbs ornCathy Corson at 815/964-5054.nnntives, the New Right, and Big Governmentnconservatives believe, that thengoal should be the mere capture ofnthe existing governmental apparatusnthrough winning elections and gettingnjobs in the bureaucracy. Control of thenformal, legal apparatus of political powernwill not yield social and culturalnpower, what the Italian Marxist AntonionGramsci called “cultural hegemony.”nIn 1980, conservative Republicans wonncontrol of the White House and thenSenate and for six years accomplishednvirtually nothing substantial in arrestingnthe growth of leviathan or reversing itsncourse. The reason for their failure hadnto do pardy with the personal weaknessesnof many of those who won but alsonwith their neglect of aspiring to thencultural dominance that is the effectivenprerequisite for eflFective political power.nThe most radical of the conservatives ofnthe 1980’s, the New Right, was eithernoblivious to or utteriy incompetent tondeal with culture, not just in the sensenof the higher arts, but also in the sensenof using social and cultural institutionsnat the lower levels of family, neighborhood,nschools, colleges, local communities,nclubs, and workplaces to build anMiddle American counterculture withinnthe belly of the beast.nThe dynamic of the Middle AmericannRevolution is captured at the end ofnTom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities,nwhen the flabby yuppy protagonistnSherman McCoy has been stripped ofnwealth, his status, his wife, his mistress,nhis children, his friends, his class, hisnprivacy, and his freedom. At last dispossessednof every external garment ofnhis social identity, he turns to fight.nExplaining what happened to him, hendraws an analogy with a house petnthat’s been turned into a vicious watchdog.n”They don’t alter that dog’s personalitynwith dog biscuits or pills,” hensays. “They chain it up, and they beatnit, and they bait it, and they taunt it,nand they beat it some more, until itnturns and bares its fangs and is readynfor the final fight every hme it hears ansound. . . . The dog doesn’t cling tonthe noHon that he’s a fabulous housenpet in some terrific dog show, the waynthe man does. The dog gets the idea.nThe dog knows when it’s Hme to turnninto an animal and fight.”nOr, as another fighter once said, younhave nothing to lose but your chains ofnslavery. n