a barbarian when he is not simplyrnsquealing like a stuck pig.)rnThese great essays recall the moral authorityrnand righteous anger of Emile Zola’srn”J’Accuse,” the great essay thatrnturned the tide for the Dreyfusards andrnagainst the anti-Semites in France at thernstart of this century, hideed, if the bookrnshould find its audience, Alexander willrnbe known as the Second Zola. When wernrecall that it was Zola who persuadedrnClemenceau and other French politicalrnleaders to take up the Dreyfus cause andrnfight anti-Semitism in France, we can appreciaternthe potential effect of this writer’srnwords. And when we consider, also,rnthat words change the world, we can understandrnthe importance of what is at issue.rnThe survival of the State of Israel,rnthe enduring sense of self-worth of thernJewish people in the Diaspora—these inrnthe end define Alexander’s cause, andrneveryone’s legitimate concern.rn]acob Neusner is Distinguished ResearchrnProfessor ofRehgious Studies at thernUniversity of South Florida in Tampa.rnOne Sword At LeastrnA Quarterly Defending thernEuropean TraditionrnA mmhdat for the struggling Catholicrnliving in the modern culture.rnPast Articles include:rn• “The Pope vs. Karol Wojtyla” (orrnThe Pope, yes, Wojtyla, no!)rn• “The Jaws of Hell” (Breaking withrnthe heretical Society of St. Pius X)rn• The Wisdom of Shakespeare:rn”Othello & O.J.”, “Unsex Me Here”rn(The Tragedy of Feminism), “OfrnDifference & Decay” (The Pope asrnKing Lear)rn• REVIEWS: Good books on thernSouth, agrarianism, the formerrnSoviet Union, Russell Kirk’s life &rnFor a sample issue, send $1.00 orrn$12.00 for a one year subscription.rn($17.00 outside continental U.S.)rnto: One Sword M Leastrn417 Moltke Ave.rnScranton, PA 18505rnThe Enlightenmentrnand the Millenniumrnby John P. McCarthyrnOn the Eve of the Millenniumrnby Conor Cruise O’BrienrnNew York: The Free Press;rn166 pp., $12.00rnConor Cruise O’Brien, the Irishrndiplomat-journalist-scholar andrnone of the more astute writers of ourrntime, lapses into spiteful diatribe in thisrncollection of essays. Provoked by the positionrntaken by the Vatican on abortionrnand contraception at the Cairo Conferencernon Population and Development inrnSeptember 1994, O’Brien fears an orthodoxrnCatholic and fundamentalist Islamicrnalliance for “the Repeal of the Enlightenment.”rnMoreover, he views this to bernthe objective of Pope John Paul II, aboutrnwhom he proclaims, “I abhor him andrnhope to see the end of his pontificate—rnbefore the close of the millennium,” andrnfor whom “hardly a day passes that I dornnot murmur to myself the prayer . . .rn’May his days be few and may another receivernhis Bishopric.'”rnPope-bashing is not the only theme ofrnO’Brien’s essays, which contain insightsrnregarding the addiction of democraticrnleaders to popularity, the inappropriatenessrnof secular optimism, and the dangersrnand irrationality of politically correctrnmultieulturalism. His animus towardrnthe Pope, however, is central enough tornrequire some explanation. It can in partrnbe attributed to his Irish origins and personalrnhistory. The child of anticlericalrnparents (although of zealously Catholicrnmaternal grandparents) who wentrnthrough the formality of having himrnbaptized but deliberately kept him fromrna Catholic education, O’Brien was neverrnreally in the bosom of the church. Herncame of age in a newly independent Irelandrnwhere Catholicism, although notrnformally established, was especially triumphalist.rnThe institutions of state andrnsociety and the political constitutionrnwere formed in accord with a Catholicrnspirit of an untypical censorious and puritanicalrncast. In his early career as arnmember of the Irish Foreign Service,rnO’Brien, using a pseudonym, was one ofrnthe eloquent dissenters in a mid-20thrncenturv Ireland existing in self-righteousrnisolation.rnAs is well recounted in the new biographyrnby D.H. Akenson, Conor (1994),rnO’Brien left the Irish diplomatic corpsrnwith an emphatic denunciation of thernUnited Nations for catering to Westernrnimperialist interests in the newly independentrnand troubled Congo. He subsequentlyrnserved as Vice Chancellor of thernUniversity of Ghana, and then became arnpillar of the New York left-wing intellectualrnelite while holding the AlbertrnSchweitzer Chair in the Humanities atrnNew York University. In 1969, he wasrnelected to the Irish parliament as a memberrnof the Irish Labour Party. O’Brien, asrna politician and, subsequentlv, as an editor,rna regular columnist, and a scholar,rnhas been a constant critic of the Irish irredentistrnideology that insists on the unificationrnof the island as essential to thernsolution of the island’s problems.rnO’Brien has long been interestedrnin the 18th-century British—more accurately,rnIrish—statesman, EdmundrnBurke. He became involved in Burkernstudies as eariy as his “leftist” NYU days,rnwhen he edited the Penguin editionrnof Burke’s Reflections on the Revolutionrnin France (1968). In his lengthy andrnthoughtful introduction he went to greatrnpains to distance Burke from his Americanrnrevivalists, such as Russell Kirk,rnwhom he accused of using Burke as arnpatron of Cold War ideology.rnO’Brien’s continued fascination withrnBurke eventually brought him closer tornthose conservatives, as his highly acclaimedrnThe Great Melody: A ThematicrnBiography of Edmund Burke (1992) suggests.rnBy this time O’Brien was labelingrnthe French Revolution as a child of the irreligiousrnVoltairian and EncyclopedistrnEnlightenment and ancestor of the BolshevikrnRevolution. He did not dismissrnthe Cold Warrior American Burkeans,rnand eloquently condemned the antireligiousrnzealotry and totalitarianism of thernRousseauist Jacobins. In the interlude,rnO’Brien had witnessed the forces of revolutionrnclose at hand in his own Ireland,rnwhich may well have tempered his perspectivernon many other issues in thernworld.rnO’Brien continues to regard himself asrna product of the more moderate Enlightenmentrn—that of Locke and Hume—rnwith its commitment to tolerance, reason,rnand the rule of law, which was bestrnadvanced by the English Whigs and thernAmerican revolutionaries. He regardsrn28/CHRONiaESrnrnrn