Many thanks for Roger McGrath’s, Joe Guzzardi’s, and Myles Kantor’s pieces in your September issue.  Rather than heaping lofty, obscurantist scorn on various currents, they actually wrestle with glaring, concrete issues, which suggests proper strategies for waging the culture war instead of merely talking about it.  For instance, it does no good merely to criticize allies when they are generally in your favor and only need instruction rather than backbiting.

Mr. Kantor (Cultural Revolutions) raises specific objections to Title VII and the “Employment Non-Discrimination Act” that lie at the very roots of our current confusions.  Solution?  Repeal!

Dr. McGrath (“Tales From the Politically Correct Crypt,” Views) tells of the familiar authoritarian/reform-liberalism now infecting the once-mighty university, from whence issue indoctrinated, ignorant, unread graduates who need instruction in Western civilization.

And Joe Guzzardi (“Ignorance Is Bliss,” Reviews) reveals the glaring irony of the times, the total ineptness of the regnant Fourth Estate, who, along with their academic peers, have abdicated their traditional responsibility to “refine and enlarge the public views” by instruction.  (My local paper, the Fresno Bee, exemplifies the ultra-left bias he reports.)

What is missing in the public, political, academic, and journalistic arenas these days is the adherence of a generally intelligent people to even nominal standards of truth and excellence.  With age and study came wisdom and discretion—nuanced “discrimination” so often emphasized by those like Irving Babbitt yet abhorred by today’s pundits, liberal and conservative alike.  Instead, equality, relativism, revisionism, opinions, fleeting sentiments and emotions, “compassion,” and ignorance are now the rule.

What is to be done?  We must build on what remains; generate an overall effort based on truth; and never merely resort to nagging criticism, resentment, and division.  Allow for informed initiative.  Thanks again for these three pieces.

        —W. Edward Chynoweth
Sanger, CA