OPINIONSrnTruth and Public Truthrnby Chilton Williamson, Jr.rn”It is as hard to tell the truth as to hide it.”rn—Baltasar GracianrnChallenging the Civil RightsrnEstablishment: Profiles of arnNew Black Vanguardrnby Joseph G. Conti and Brad StetsonrnWestport, Connecticut: Praeger;rn240 pp., $22.95rnWhile the conservative movement,rnlike the liberal one, has its sharernof dishonest and fraudulent people, liberalismrnis itself an inherently dishonestrnbusiness whose promulgators have beenrnlying to themselves, as well as to everyonernelse, lo these many generations. Asrna misrepresentation of fundamental reality,rnits intellectual coherence and integrityrnare increasingly challenged byrnconditions of its own making as well asrnby unfolding events, in spite of the enormousrnpolitical momentum it has accumulatedrnsince the cultural tsunamis ofrnthe 1960’s as my own horrible generationrnChilton Wilhamson, jr., is senior editorrnfor books at Chronicles.rn(which ought to have been slaughteredrnat birth) has “matured” into an army ofrnideological zombies that first infiltrated,rnand finally has taken possession of,rnAmerica’s cultural institutions, the publishingrnbusiness, and lastly the federalrngovernment itself. Political correctness isrnnot just a prolonged paroxysm of demoniacrnhatred; it is the hysteria of fanaticsrnwho, aware that they cannot maintainrnthe pretense of reality much longer withoutrngoing mad, are prepared to embracernmadness in preference to the alternative,rnwhich is to tear down the imposingrnMinistry of Public Truth they have laboriouslyrnerected, stone by grimy stone,rnover the past 60 or 70 years. Their accomplishment,rnafter all, is no meanrnthing: in a few decades they have managed,rnwith some largely unaccredited assistancernfrom such otherwise forgottenrnDead White Males as William of Occam,rnRene Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche,rnand John Dewey, to complete therninversion of reality begun some centuriesrnago, and transform the American Experimentrninto the First Universal Fantasyrnto which popular culture, highbrowrnculture, journalism, academic scholarship,rnand political philosophy have allrnsuccumbed.rnThe American people since the earlyrn19th century have prided themselves onrntheir “idealism,” though there have alwaysrnbeen pessimists among them tornsuggest that idealism, if not actually arnvariant of unrealism, nevertheless is arnway station on the road to it. Had thernConfederacy won the Civil War, perhapsrnMaryland Plantation, rather than MassachusettsrnBay, might have become therntotemic American social order and a solidrnbusiness and political enterprise replacedrna colony of religious schismaticsrnas the foundational ideal behind the developmentrnof a great nation and empire.rnIf so, Abraham Lincoln got some of whatrnhe deserved, and we got the rest of it. Asrnit happened, the New England traditionrnwon over all other sectional influences,rnimposing upon the rest of the country itsrnbias in favor of the perfect over the good,rnthe ideal over the real; its commitmentrnto the power of positive thinking (if anrnidea is desirable, it can be made true byrnfervent belief); and its assumption thatrn30/CHRONICLESrnrnrn