chronicles of Culture originated as a protest against thenperversion of the American culture by something we call thenLiberal Culture. The marvelous cultural pluralism of thenAmerican civilization, grounded in the time-honored persuasionnthat the other’s point of view is our common asset, hasnbeen corrupted by liberal zealotry in pursuit of a monopoly onntruth. About four years ago we at The Rockford Institute feltnthat something should be done to redress the wrongs inflictednupon intellectual tenets that for so long, and with such prodigiousnachievements, had governed the American ethos as it isnreflected in the national culture. We founded a bimonthly.nSoon it became clear that we had found both an audience andnour own image. So we recently decided to redouble our effortsnand to accelerate the distribution of what we think and believe.nThus, instead of making our beliefs readable six times per year,nwe will be doing it twice as frequendy. So here, briefly restated,nis what we believe in.nJ. he liberal polity, as it was anticipated by its 18th- andn19th-century champions, encompassed many components thatnwe could very much appreciate. And, in reality, it did so innmany respects. It evolved some invaluable concepts—representativendemocracy, the rule of law, voluntary social order,nfunctional pluralism in culture (chiefly in America), thenhumanitarian principle. Its notions of justice and compassionncame from the Judeo-Christian moral sense. Western liberalnsociety as we know it is the end result of diverse philosophicalncontentions, religious hopes, ideological sensibilities andnschools of thinking—from the Enlightenment treatises to thenprograms of old American Whigs. Notwithstanding itsnpolitical vicissitudes, its basic vocabulary remained the same.nWords like civilization, reason, humanity, optimism, commerce,nprogress, self-reliance, enterprise, individualism,nresponsibility constituted its framework. We have no quarrelnwith these words, but from them grew a culture whosensaaosanct tenet, or secular worship, became an unbounded,namorphous self-criticism which finally perverted both conceptsnand values, stultified them into caricatures, eradicated theirncommonsensical substance, reduced them—in our time—tonthe level of driveling nihilism. At the peak of its splendor—nbefore the process of perversion set in—this culture was callednthe “bourgeois culture”; it thrived and enriched the societiesnthat developed it. Then it extended lush privileges to those whondeclared that attempts to destroy it would henceforth be callednart, or literature, or amusement, or free inquiry, and that’snwhere the downward spiral began.nDuring the 1960’s and 70’s, we witnessed in America thendeliberate and unabashed murder of the bourgeois culturenperpetrated in the name of ideas and tenets which had beenncormpted. What emerged in its stead we named the liberalnCulture—because misguided liberal sentiments must bear thenresponsibility for its existence. Since we had a very warm spotnChronicles of Culturen- GOING MONTHLY <nE 1)1 I oK’s COM MI; NTnnnfor the bourgeois culture at the time of its bloom—and we intenselyndisliked what had been proposed, or rather superimposed,nto take its place—we began to publish this journal. Wenrecognized that the Liberal Culture was actually digging thengrave of our entire civilization, so we went to war.nUnder what banner do we battie?nTo put it succinctly, we fight beneath our own flag.nLiberalism maintains nowadays that all it wants is a decentnsociety ensuring justice and dignity for all—but so do we.nLiberals say they want a polity that is responsive to humannneeds, that they desire material sufficiency for everybody—sondo we. However, we have one stipulation: all these preciousngoods must come by public consent, not through prefabricatednrecipes concocted by theorists and enforced by politicians whonknow how to manipulate constituencies and interest groups tonthe detriment of a larger idea and a national entity. Whennliberals demand honest pluralism in culture, this is exactiy whatnwe want. But do liberals live up to their preachings? It is ob-n