into confederations of self-governingrnneighborhoods. Given economic conditions,rnthat’s no more Utopian than arnreturn to agrarian glory, and it’s morerninspiring than Naylor and Willimon’srnweak proposal that cities simply set populationrnlimits and give people incentivesrnto leave. (To their credit, they do discussrnthe advantages of neighborhood secession.)rnI don’t mean to sound so relentiesslyrnnegative. And as I said, there’s a lot herernto like. No book that bashes AT&T, thernwelfare state, and the Pentagon is all bad.rnIt’s just that the decentralist bookshelf alread’rncontains many volumes far betterrnthan this—works by Jane Jacobs, Ivan IIlich,rnKarl Hess, Colin Ward, LeopoldrnKohr, and more. It may be tempting tornbreak into hozzanahs each time a bookrnappears that supports our side, but I’drnrather save my cheers for projects that actuallyrnadvance the cause.rnJesse Walker is the Warren T. BrookesrnFellow in Environmental journalism atrnthe Competitive Enterprise Institute inrnWashinf>ton, D.C.rnThe GodrnThat Livesrnby Herbert LondonrnAmerican Academia andrnthe Survival of Marxist Ideasrnb}’ Dario Femandez-MorerarnPraeger: Westport, CT;rn204 pp., $59.95rnThe fall of the Wall; the assertion byrnformer commimist leaders thatrnthey were engaged in systematic espionagernagainst the United States; revelationsrnprovided by the Venona tapes ofrncommunist activity in this country; thernadmission by Gorbachev, Yeltsin, andrnother leaders that communism did notrnwork; General Volkogonov’s concessionrnthat President Reagan was justified in describingrnthe U.S.S.R. as the “Evil Empire”;rnthe collapse of the Soviet economyrnbrought about bv decades of neglect andrnmisunderstandings; the incontrovertiblernevidence of millions murdered duringrnthe Stalinist purges; Solzhenitsyn’s darkrnbut accurate depiction of the Gulag; thernblunt admission that Potemkin villagesrnwere built to dupe Western leaders intornbelieving the Soviet Union was a secularrnparadise —all of this evidence shouldrnhave damaged the Marxist mystiquernthat has enthralled the American professoriate,rnbut it has not. Dario Femandez-rnMorera of Northwestern Universityrnexplores the reasons behind this monumentalrndenial of the evidence and exposesrnthe necrophiliac tendencies of thernAmerican academy.rnMarxism is protean, changing constantiyrnin form and appearance for lackrnof rules or logic to constrain it. Moreover,rnas Fernandez-Morera points out,rntruth itself can never be objective in arnMarxist sense because it is fashioned byrncategories (class, race, sex, sexual orientation,rngeographic identification) and politicalrnpower.rnFor the academic deconstructing arntext or engaging in semiotics, there is norntruth to discover, only social and culturalrnpractice. His remarkable flexibility inrnI T ^ S ( D O M I N G !rnThe Rockford Institute’s First Annual Summer Schoolrn(OPEN TO STUDENTS OF ALL AGES!)rn”Redefining the American Right:rnF r om Aristotle to Pat Buchanan’*rn2 7 J u l y – 1 A u g u s trnD o n ‘ t m a k e y o u r v a c a t i o n p l a n s y e t . . .rnMARCH 1998/31rnrnrn