Tacitus, as valid as the anecdotes of anGreek propagandist for foreign imperialism,nlike Polybius. The campaignnScipio volunteered for ended with thenmassacre of the Spanish leaders duringna truce. That notorious naysayer, Catonthe Censor, tried vainly to get thencommander in chief, Sulpicius Galba,ncondemned, and put his speech againstnGalba into his great Origins of thenCities of Italy. Scipio went on tonbecome consul twice. The first time hensacked Carthage and sold all he did notnslaughter into slavery; the second timenhe returned to Spain to do the same tonthe city of Numantia. In some accountsnhe gave the Numantines a daynto commit suicide before enslaving thensurvivors. The dreary Cervantes foundnthe Numantines fit topic for a play, andnGerman archeologist Adolf Schultennwrote about them memorably. Americantried to live up to the Scipionicnexample in the Philippines. Cato andnWilliam Jennings Bryan felt that freeninstitutions could not survive in such anmoral environment. Were they wrong?nAnd, finally, the sting in the tail: “ifnthe isolationists, environmentalists andnother naysayers (both left and right)nhave their dreary way.” Polybius’nGreek prose style is dreary. Whatevernfaults Edward Abbey had in The MonkeynWrench Gang or Desert Sohtaire,nhe was never dreary. In the last generationnof the American republic, opponentsnof interventionism includednCharles Austin Beard and H.L.nMencken, Sinclair Lewis and FranknLloyd Wright, Robinson Jeffers andnEzra Pound, Robert Hutchins andnEelix Cummers Morley. These mennwere neither dreary nor uncreative. Onnthe other side stood Claude Pepper,nHarry Hopkins, and Franklin DelanonRoosevelt (their contemporarynequivalents being Bush, Baker, andnBuckley). The destruction of our freenstate by the powers given the executivenby the Lend-Lease Act and otherninterventionist policies, powers nowndefended by the ironically named RepublicannParty and “responsible conservatives,”nled straight to the bankrupt,nuncompetitive, sterile society wensee around us. We say “nay” to thatnsociety so that our children may live innordered republican freedom and thenseemingly boundless creativity thatnAmericans once knew and can knownagain.nOn ‘Western Literature’nAm I imagining things? Has Chroniclesngone politically correct?nThe article by A. Carl Bredahl (“Inscribingnthe American Frontier,” Novembern1991) belongs in the PMLA.nIt must have been delivered at annMLA convention, perhaps on a panelnon Western lesbian writers. Is yourneditorial board, or Mr. Williamson, sondesperate for something positive saidnon Western literature by an academicnthat you will publish anything of thisnnature?nTo begin with, the cutely punningnuse of “inscription” is itself characteristicnof current literary “scholarship” atnits superficial worst. This is pseudosophisticationnand pseudo-profundity;nmen have never drawn frontiers out ofnsome abstract ideological adherence ton”exclusion.” It has always come naturallynto them, in all civilizationsnthroughout the whole of history withoutnexception. Good walls make goodnneighbors.nOur ancestors did not build castlesnon hills because of insensitivity to then”environment,” but because they realizedn(intuitively, not ideologically), asnBredahl and his ilk clearly do not, thatnSERIES.OF: SlfiSnSIN OF DEPRESSIONnnnAPRIL 1992/5n