Politics and the intellectual world: changes in Europe.

I

EUROPE IS NOW FREE of the "classical" totalitarian/utopian systems that dominated it through much of the twentieth century. The collapse of the Fascist/Nazi system left few and insignificant remnants after it. The sturdier and in some ways more dangerous Communist system broke down of itself, not by armed force, to the utter surprise (sometimes tinged by regret and consternation) of a whole army of politologists and sociologists, but to the joy and relief of tens of millions of ordinary people. Its survivals were unfortunately more substantial.

Whereas in America the 1990s were widely seen as a mere "vacation from history," in Europe, much as in Spenser's The Faerie Queene, (1) the demise of the old dragon resulted in the spewing out of dozens of smaller venomous creatures that spread out and populated the surface of the earth. Another way of putting it is that in America we complain (and justly so) of the persistence of "political correctness." In Europe a much more malignant variant of the same managed just after 1990 to occupy the key positions of the key countries; to impose its will and an ideological/legal orientation on the all-important European centers of power in Brussels and Strassbourg; and, at bottom, to sketch out a new ("socialist/humanistic") version of the Marxist tradition inside Western countries, but, even more cynically and cruelly, by financial blackmail, over an Eastern Europe that had barely succeeded, with much effort and suffering, to get rid of the Bolshevik yoke.

In Italy power came into the hands of Massimo d'Alema who had started his career by handing flowers with warm enthusiam at the precocious age of eight to Berlinguer, then supreme leader of the Communists in his country. The Spanish ultra-leftist Javier Solana became (and still is) one of the leaders of the European Union. Lionel Jospin, staunch member of the French Trotskyite faction, became Prime Minister of his country. Schroder, Joschka Fischer, Tony Blair, rather strident Socialists only a couple of decades ago, captured the leadership of Germany and England. The list is far from complete. In cozy comradeship, this group, much encouraged by the protective smiles of Bill and Hillary Clinton, set about to reshape Europe.

We have to be lucid: the political "elites" in the Europe of the 1990s were but inches away from the ideology of a slightly revamped Communism "with a human face." Brutal measures were set in place. The historical vandalism in England is unparalleled: the House of Lords virtually abolished, with plans for abolishing the monarchy well underway, the century-old tradition of gentlemanly clubbing forbidden, the educational system deeply harmed and corrupted, intrusions in the family and private sphere the rule as often as the exception, tokens of identity such as the system of weights and measures, the nature of the currency, are now out or on the way out. Most European countries established gender "quotas" for election candidacies, thus making a mockery of their own constitutionally sanctioned freedoms. Anumber of liberties of speech were curtailed with threats of jail terms and other punishments; sizeable slices of discourse were swept under the rug. Countries, where the electorate had the courage to vote differently from the already established system, were subject without compunction to brutal public attacks and even punitive measures (Austria is a good example, though not the only one). Moderate conservative parties, such as the Christian-Democrat ones, whose constitutional merits after World War II had been absolutely invaluable, were singled out for smashing (in Italy, but also in Germany). In a word, the "soft despotism" of Tocqueville seemed well on its way to being institutionalized, as a response (I would almost say: a revenge!) to the breakdown of the Communist utopia.

Fortunately, a turning point intervened after this orgy of Leftism. It was triggered or at least encouraged by the paper-thin victory of the Republican Party in the United States in 2000. At and around that point we can notice a timely rebellion of the European electorate: Austria, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Portugal, and particularly Italy rid themselves of their leftist overlords. France seemed poised to move even more decisively in a right direction. The continuation of Socialist power in Germany was a mere fluke and remains under a cloud to the day of this writing. The nimble survivalist Tony Blair in England maintained himself by adroit flip-flops and personal attractiveness, hypocritical though these would appear to be. More than once a country in Eastern Europe balked at different impositions coming from the West.

The power of the Left in Europe, such as it still is, relies largely upon a somewhat waning momentum, but is staunchly supported by the Eurocratic authorities already in place; it also relies upon fond hopes in the fluidity of the American situation. The lucid observer is soon convinced that the widespread European dislike of Bush, Rumsfeld, and of the whole Republican team is not based primarily upon power-game or economic reasons, but upon ideological ones. Many gullible, disgruntled, or brainwashed citizens have great difficulty in understanding American conservatism. If not all, at least some of them feel discomfort in the face of the openly religious comportments of the American public and administration; they had gotten used to an American officialdom that was contemptuous, sometimes persecutorial, in particular toward Christian churches, but also toward religion in general. They felt snugly at home with the discourses of secularist triumphalism. They also felt comfortable in the comradely competition for the title of the best, fastest, and most complete "therapeutic state" (to use Paul Gottfried's admirable label). (2)

Changes are likely to occur in European mentalities sooner or later. (The recent Iraq war is a partial wake-up call.) An important expected indicator will be the proposed "European constitution" which was prepared by a committee presided over by the former French president, Valery Giscard d'Estaing. Already for some time the Vatican has insisted that any such charter should include (and this seems a small demand for a totally obvious matter) a reference to the Christian roots of Europe. So far, the suggestion has been ignored. In an even broader sense, it remains to be seen whether the European post-2000 electorate will come to grasp that a Christian Democratic presence is absolutely indispensable for the healing and well-being of their would-be community (or federation). Any reasonable person has to understand that, historically, enormous gratitude is owed to the movements that, immediately after the end of World War II, succeeded in absorbing and moderating the often unruly masses, which, exasperated by the pace of modernization, were otherwise prone to being captured by the demagogical stances of radical populist and nationalist orators. We are talking here not about "skinheads," but about thoroughly decent and earnest families and individuals, worried by the loss of their habitudes and identities. These found a home and a feeling of security inside Christian-Democrat parties, and became willing to partake in the game of constitutional democracy, whenever their own stands were recognized as reasonable and legitimate.

The misguided and harmful attempt to demonize the Christian-Democrat movements was, throughout the 1990s, seriously counterproductive. It led to the reemergence of undesirable extremist groups (even when these were not actually "fascist" as their frightened adversaries, above all in the media, labeled them): the libertarian Austrian party of Jorg Haider, the radical regionalists of Flanders and Lombardy, similar groups in Denmark and the Netherlands and others. All these would have been much more difficult to imagine under the soothing and wise stewardship of Christian Democracy. Perhaps the most convincing evidence is provided by France where the admirable Mouvement Republicain Populaire (MRP) created already in the late 1940s under the leadership of such luminaries as Robert Schumann, Georges Bidault, and Pierre Pflimlin had not succeeded in establishing itself as impressively as the Italian and German Christian-Democratic parties. The consequence was that France had to suffer under a series of somewhat disruptive groups such as those led by Pierre Poujade in the 1950s and by Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 1980s and 1990s. In fact it was only the towering stature of Charles De Gaulle, a Christian-Democrat at heart, who stabilized the situation in France.

Significantly, certain repetitions can be noted in recently liberated Eastern Europe. The two center-right governments that Hungary has experienced so far had clear Christian-Democrat overtones. In Romania the single four-year non-socialist administration was centered on a party that was at least nominally Christian-Democrat. Such parties are active in Poland, the Czech Republic, Moldavia and other emerging Eastern European countries. In this whole part of Europe, Christian-Democrat doctrines appear to be a serious solution in the effort to neutralize the forces of populist nationalism that are attractive to all too many of these rather distressed and inexperienced new electorates. Disoriented traditionalists cannot be educated into the subtleties of procedural democracy by imposing "political correctness" upon them. Unfortunately that is exactly what "Eurocracy" is trying to do, while denigrating the populations and their historical past. Entirely harmless voters risk being turned off for long periods of time if they are not offered a suitable, solid, and reliable political habitation, much as had been offered after the 1945 liberation to the Western Europeans.

If, therefore, Europe finds itself in a state of turbulence and disorientation from a political point of view, there are at least a few signs for some possible improvement in the fields of intellectual and artistic endeavor. Given the traditional impact of the theoretical upon the practical in Europe, such stirrings might well constitute the beginning of a movement in the right direction or might provide some reason for hope. Let us quickly and, I am sure, incompletely, survey some of these.

II

The first thing to be mentioned, in terms of importance, are undoubtedly the earliest stages of a coming to terms, Auseinandersetzung with the horrific inheritance of Communism. We still remember vividly the sad decades during which simple critiques of some side of Communism met immediately with unusually strident responses. These were the decades during which luminaries like Sartre, Picasso, Aragon, Habermas, and many, many others too numerous to mention, diminished whatever merit and integrity they may have had with servile (in some cases hysterical) outbreaks and gestures toward Communism, while at the same time exerting a kind of dictatorship over their less "prominent" colleagues.

The demise of Communism as a system put an end to all this. No premium was available any longer for pro-Communist activities or proclamations, and many inhibitions disappeared. The relativism and deconstructionism of a Derrida or a Foucault also found themselves cut down to size. What is more, the opening of the Moscow archives engendered a steady flow of raw evidence regarding the sheer darkness of the Soviet regime. To date we have seen only the tip of the iceberg. The irrefutable proof of Marxist-Leninism's crimes and evil on a mass scale tends to delegitimize the "milder" leftist activities of its continuators. This is seen in scholarly studies and begins to be seen in literary works also. (Thus, some consider Anne Applebaum's excellent Gulag, which came out in summer 2003, as a fundamental work, and in some ways superior to Solzhenitsyn's three-volume highly influential "literary experiment.")

To be sure, we already had the benefit of the pioneering examinations of Robert Conquest in England, and of Martin Malia and Robert Pipes (among others) (3) in the UnitedStates. Theoretical and philosophical works such as those of Michael Oakeshott, Raymond Aron, and Roger Scruton provided sustenance for the reasoning mind during the "dry decades." The writings of Solzhenitsyn with their effective mixture of the literary, the ethical, and the historical had provided a significant breach in the united front of the Left. However, more recently, new works began to accumulate and to build against Communism the kind of massive case that we had until now only against Fascism. The chief among these is the work of Stephane Courtois and his collaborators. Their Livre noir du communisme (4) is, the meticulous reader will say, still a good way from a complete account of the harm inflicted by this dystopian vision. Nevertheless it is an important scholarly step forward, since the contrarian voices (particularly in France) sounded predictably hollow.

This and other publications are to be welcomed because they begin to bring much needed balance to the history of World War II. It was always clear to the thoughtful observer that the righteous cause of the all-too-patient democracies in their battle against the "axis of evil" of the 1930s and 1940s had been marred by two facts: (1) the alliance with a dark power whose crimes and dangers to humanity placed it plainly in the same category as their adversaries; and (2) the pointlessly ruthless manner in which the air war was pursued by the Allies during its last few years (a ruthlessness that continued in some cases even after the occupation, though in different forms), particularly toward civilians: the nuclear unleashing against Japanese civilians and the indiscriminate bombings of Germany (of which Dresden and Hamburg may stand as examples, but are far from being the only ones) are cases that begin to be better known. (5) One might add to this the militarily unjustified razing of the venerable monastery of Monte Cassino, a true cradle of Western culture as a whole and a holy shrine to any Christian, by AngloAmerican forces, a misdeed that seems all but forgotten nowadays. (6)

Speaking out openly about these two grave errors and the ensuing guilt is not a detraction in my view, nor just "historical revisionism," but part of a desirable cleansing process and of the emergence of a more balanced and truthful image of World War II. It begins to counteract the undesirable consequences of the blurred and simplifying image usually fed through the educational process and many other means. Chief among these consequences was the protective and sympathetic attitude toward the monstrous and looming shadow of the surviving utopian totalitarian system and of its related policies and discourses. By hiding and minimizing the practical effects of Marxist-Leninist realities, its milder variants could thrive unimpeded and could pursue their activities destructive of tradition and hostile to the normalities of democratic capitalism. Therefore, a merciless illumination of the intrinsic evil of Communism and an uncompromising separation from it are a radical step toward re-establishing common sense and a natural state of affairs, including the primacy of ethical virtue in personal and public matters.

It is encouraging that some literary authors have begun to contribute to this revelatory unfolding and unmasking. A few of these European examples may suffice. Interestingly, they often come from individuals who had gained prominence as left-wingers. Gunter Grass is perhaps the most celebrated among these, holding at some point even official consulting titles for leading socialist politicians in Germany. True, there had been timid anti-Communist episodes or suggestions in some of his prior novels or essays, but they were rare and usually hidden or indirect. By contrast his most recent short novel "Im Krebsgang" (Steidl, 2002; now just translated in English as Crabwalk, Harcourt: New York and San Diego, 2003) emerges as more outspoken. It describes the horrific fate of a ship full of desperate German refugees (the first victims of the most radical and massive "ethnic cleansing" of the last half-century) sunk without the slightest justification by a Soviet military ship; thousands perished. The book created something close to a sensation, particularly because it was an unexpected gesture coming from the senescent novelist.

Still, I have more respect for a few younger writers. One of them died prematurely after spending most of his adult life in England. I refer to W. G. Sebald. On the Natural History of Disaster (New York: Random, 2003; in German Luftkriegund Literatur. Frankfurt; Fischer, 2001), his last posthumous work, is written in his typical manner, a mixture of melancholy literary description and essayistic meditation. The other, much less known in America, is the absolutely first-class playwright and prose-author Botho Strauss. He took on audaciously, in 1993, the oppressive German brand of "political correctness" in a very thoughtful long essay, "Anschwellender Bockgesang" ("overswelling goat-song"--as one might translate the title), speaking about the need to break disciplined left-wing alignment and the need for the perception of the tragic dimension in history and society. (This is just one example among many of his writings.)

Another young and similarly visible novelist is martin Amis, son of the great writer and uncompromisingly honest thinker, Kingsley Amis. Martin Amis was equally well known for his postmodernist style and his consistent siding with leftwing causes. Nevertheless in Koba the Dread (7) he sounds more like his father and his father's life-long friend and collaborator, Robert Conquest. In a partly comic or satirical, partly horrified and disgusted tone, the younger Amis points to the slaughters and scorched-earth policies of Bolshevism throughout a powerfully emerging and gradually progressing (both politically and economically) country, such as Russia had been just before World War I and the catastrophic revolution(s) of 1917. It is not the peer of Solzhenitsyn's breathtaking epic, (8) and particularly of its third volume, which American publishers apparently hesitate to translate. It remains however to be seen whether Amis's relatively mild piece will be a "career-stopper" as such bold initiatives have sometimes proved to be or whether it is part of the vanguard of a broader and saner consensus.

Two or three more symptoms ought to be mentioned here. One has to do with Italy. In summer 2002, a group of more than 50 writers, artists, and other intellectuals gathered in Florence and elsewhere in order to debate the best way in which they could organize themselves as a conservative wing of Italian culture, which continues to be dominated by leftist tendencies. The initiator in June 2002 was Marcello dell'Utri, the starting point a much-discussed meeting in Florence in June, and the chosen "forefathers" the philosopher Croce and the historian Renzo De Felice. (9)

Let us now switch to France, where both leftism and the reaction against it are perhaps the strongest in Western Europe. I will mention first the major novelist, Jean Raspail (by now an elderly figure), little known in the United States, but a constant best-seller in France, and revered, of all people, by the Canadian ecologists for his outspokenness in defense of tiny ethnic groups and cultures being erased by the steam-roller of global modernization. Raspail is a staunch old-line Roman Catholic and a conservative monarchist; he has also written with great empathy about the extinction of Tierra del Fuego tribes, and about Caribbean, Siberian, and Amerindian torments. In English he gained success by the fantastic/anticipatory book Camp of Saints which imagined a Europe overrun by massive waves of third-world immigrants: it seemed a pretty in credible scenario in 1973, perhaps slightly less so now, thirty years later.

The bulk of Raspail's work has remained untranslated and unknown in America. Of this I will refer to just two major and significant novels. One of them is the dystopian novel Septentrion that describes the institution of a Communistlike dictatorship and the flight of a number of dissidents by armed train toward a more and more inhospitable and mythical "North." This tragic work was inspired to some extent by the historical events surrounding the desperate and heartrending last weeks of Admiral Kolchak's heroic rebellion against Red power in Siberia in the early 1920s. It also suggests the numbing conformity of modern globalism and of its attempt to destroy every individual autonomy.

The other major work by Jean Raspail is L'Anneau du pecheur ("The Ring of the Fisherman"; Paris: Albin Michel, 1995), the action of which is placed on two levels. One is historical and shows the brutality through which secular powers effected the unification of the split Catholic Church at the end of the Middle Ages. According to the fictional narrative the legally most correct claim would have been that of the Avignon Pope, Cardinal Pedro de Luna, whose papal name was Benedict. He and his tiny band of faithful followers went underground (according to Raspail's fiction) and continued the legitimate line of true magisterial faith to our days. Meanwhile, on another, contemporary level, attempts are made by the Vatican to rediscover the anonymous beggar, the papal descendant of Benedict, and bring him back into the fold. The whole novel contains a thinly disguised warning or prophecy as to the future of Catholicism, indeed of all Christianity in the twenty-first century. Raspail's most celebrated and feted work was devoted to Antoine Tounens, a nineteenth-century eccentric whose dream was to establish an independent feudal monarchy in Patagonia. This quixotic and ultimately despairing mode of thinking pervades all of Raspail's novels. (10)

III

With this we reach the domain of French thinking, which displays energetic efforts against egalitarian trends and against the pressures toward monolithic alignments and conformity often promoted by modern societies. This French resistance has been going on for several decades and has by now acquired a momentum of its own. However, a warning is in order here. A number of adversarial critiques come from the Left and make a misplaced and unfortunate use of anti-American discourses. This is due to the (only partly) erroneous perception that destructive anti-values are nurtured in America and spread out thereafter all over the world. This is also explained by simple ignorance; many of the authors simply fail to understand the components of vigorous conservatism in American intellectual life. (11)

I would mention first and foremost Remi Brague and Chantal Delsol, different as they might otherwise be. Both are preoccupied with the future and structure of Europe. Both are solid scholars who construct on the foundations of their scholarship valid commentaries on contemporary affairs. Theirs is political philosophy rooted in an erudite history of ideas. Among Brague's two main theoretical books (12) one argues that the possibility of a European project depends on following the "Roman road," in two different ways. The first is that the "Romans" had placed themselves midway between the ultra-sophisticated "Hellenism" of the intellectuals and the "barbarity" of anti-civilizational forces, always sliding on a scale between the two and negotiating obstacles along the way, but also proving a moderate hospitality toward alien cultures. Contemporary Europe ought to do likewise, in his opinion. The second, in which "Roman" has a more religious sense, is a categorical rejection of "Marcionism" (the second-century heresy that would have banished the Judaic roots and kinships of Christianity's sacred books). However, Brague's understanding is a broader one: he thinks that "Marcionism" is a kind of gnostic strategy--Brague knows and respects Eric Voegelin, a rare case among French intellectuals--which separates the present from the historical past. He is one of the most respectable and learned conservative thinkers now active in France.

So is Chantal Delsol. She has published at least two solid and scholarly works, one devoted to the concept of subsidiarity (it is probably the best book on the topic written so far) and one on a typology and classification of twentieth century ideologies (this has been translated in ten or so languages, but not yet in English). (13) However, a steady flow of books on topics of immediate concerns, written in a more essayistic tone, accompany these two major works. Delsol balances admirably judicious temperance with eloquence and courage. She clearly enjoys working against the current, emphasizing the individual and the personal as against "group judgments," and dissecting the anxieties, absurdities, and the unhappiness of our societies as they fail to find a genuine alternative to the utopianisms of the past.

We must remember that already in the 1980s and even earlier there had been substantial French thinkers who had spoken up in sophisticated ways against the theories of the left. Raymond Aron is well-known and too much of a major figure to be discussed here. (The same applies to the venerable closet-conservatives Rene Girard and Michel Serres.) However J.L. Harouel's Essai sur l'inegalite (1988), which was and remains one of the most solid modern studies dismissing egalitarianism, was never translated into English, nor did it become known or enter public discussion in any serious way, which is a genuine loss. In turn, Alain Besancon was one of the finest early anti-Communist commentators, an analyst of the Soviet Union and of Western brands of Communism. More recently he has expanded his interest in the function of art and in the religious foundations of politics. (14) He also is underrated and under-studied in the Anglo-American world.

Paul Virilio and Ignacio Ramonet (both translated into English, at least partially, and the latter pretty much a leftist) are just two among the many who have discussed in some detail the impact of the information revolution and the internet on the structures of society, discussions that are deeper and more thought ful, I would say, than most of what is being written and said in the United States, with conclusions that are conservative, even when the authors' intentions are not. (15) This is strikingly clear in the case of the articulate leftist Armand Mattelart, who blames globalism and "the new world order" because he regards them as the product of the multinationals; at the same time he is extremely precise and useful in his historical comments. Mattelart shows the connection between globalization and its utopian sources, all the way back to the projects of Renaissance visionaries and rationalists. He is particularly good on the nineteenth century, explaining with patient erudition how globalization began to be institutionalized step by step during that period. (16) Others are more openly conservative. A good example is the Jesuit Paul Valadier, a powerful critic of relativism on both philosophical and empirical grounds. (17) Another is the ever-sprightly Philippe Muray, (18) who shows with plenty of unquenchable irony how we are beginning to live under a new form of totalitarianism that is flexible, complex, and works on our subconscious.

The heavyweights in this long and respectable enumeration remain Pierre Manent and Marcel Gauchet. Neither of them can be described as a full-fledged conservative. What is interesting in their cases is the process of change that can be noted. Both started from somewhat left-inclining positions, though even at that point based on reasonable thinking and moderate judgments. Gauchet is increasingly preoccupied with qualifying the currently predominant philosophy of "human rights" and secularity, although he does not yet seem to have reached the point when he is willing to jettison it wholesale. In his Disenchantment of the World he wrestles mightily and, I would say, not always coherently, with the challenge of finding an appropriate place for religion in the current state of affairs. He is, one must admit, at least aware of the challenge per se which is commendable. In more recent years he has moved, with irritating slowness, toward an answer.

In La Democratie contre elle meme (19) and subsequent essays he seems to provide the sketch of an answer. This might be summarized as follows. To the extent to which post-modernism is the prevalent framework inside which our intellect functions nowadays, we must admit a virtually interminable multiplicity and plurality. If so, then we cannot eliminate a religious world view from among these multiple answers and theories. It is true, to qualify for acceptance, religion (Catholic Christianity for instance) ought to abandon any absolute truth claim and confine itself to the smallest possible interior sphere. A more cynical observer would say: Gauchet accepts Catholicism in the public sphere on condition that it becomes a very private Protestantism. It is clearly not the kind of position that would be acceptable to the traditional Catholic: on the other hand, it does represent an interesting step forward for the thinker in question. Madness and Democracy (translated quite recently by Princeton University Press) is an extremely thorough dismantling of Michel Foucault's antinomian doctrines, which have in fact by now lost their influence in France, but are still standard fare in American universities.

Likewise, Manent started in his earlier writings from the kind of liberalism defined by Locke and Rousseau, although he was, from the very beginning, aware of more recent developments in American thinking, including Leo Strauss. Again, with excruciating lentitude, he began to understand the complexities of "liberalism," starting from his famous anthology of liberal thinking. Thereafter, he moved his center of gravity toward Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Benjamin Constant, and Guizot. One can even detect episodes of an acceptance of Christian-Democratic positions and of an understanding of American conservatism as a form of liberalism. (20)

Finally, a few words about the salutary initiative of some French intellectuals: dismantling the cliches and commonplaces of leftist bias on past and present history. Thus, in the spring and summer of 2003, the book of Jean Sevillia on "historical correctness" was very high on the best-seller lists for several months. Sevillia had already been identified for his excellent study on "intellectual terrorism" in post-war France and for his leadership in the editorial offices of the leading French daily Le Figaro. His Historiquement correct takes the whole of French history (with a few excursions outside: religious policy in medieval Spain, the Crusades, the unfogiveable smear campaign against the saintly Pius XII) and shows step by step how it is being distorted in schoolbooks, in the public imagination, in public celebrations, in widely accepted mendacious topoi. It is a thick and erudite book, though clearly written, and its emphasis on anti-religious thematic narrations in French historiography is nothing short of gratifying. Elisabeth Levy continues this examination in a similarly successful best-seller dealing with media errors and outrageous ideological biases on matters that range from demagogical judgments on the Balkan situation to the demonization of those who have the "courage," or oddity, to dislike some postmodernist exhibits or books. This is done with precision and is always fully footnoted. There is a clear need for equally good examinations of similar issues by Anglophone authors. Few things would be more useful than a kind of "Mother Jones" of the American conservatives. (21)

The above overview, which leaves aside many things, (22) might give an idea of the rich and complex interactions between politics and the intellectual life in Europe. The headline-producing positions and actions of some European countries are not necessarily the ultimate or unique indicator of future events. Many European intellectuals are thoughtful and wise, or interesting. Many display some form of "anti-Americanism" because they are (justly, in my opinion) adverse to the technocratic, egalitarian, anti-traditionalist, and politically leftist tenets peddled by the American media and, sometimes, by a number of sociopolitical spokesmen and even federal institutions. What I consider urgently needed is a better understanding and awareness, on both sides of the Atlantic, of the diverse kinds of conservatism underlying the value-orientations of sizeable, perhaps majority, parts of the populations in both continents. One of the ways in which this can be achieved (and a true "Atlantism" can be re-established better, I would argue, than by political negotiations and even economic pressures) is by precisely the refusal to accept the abusive monopoly of left-wing intellectuals on the communication of the intellectual events unfolding on these two sides. The awareness of the abundance and fertility of conservative thinking in both Europe and America by their counterparts can contribute in essential ways to a healthier understanding of the affairs of this world.

1. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene 1, 14-26. 2. Paul Edward Gottfried, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy (Columbia and London, 2002), 13. See also James Nolan, The Therapeutic State: Justifying Government at Century's End (New York, 1998)--which tends to "justify" (!!) this process. 3. E.g., Richard Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime (New York, 1993) or Communism: A History (New York, 2001), Martin Malia, The Sovlet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991 (New York, 1994), and, of course, Robert Conquest. The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the 1930s (Oxford, 1991 [1968])--just his main book inside a steady flow of other valuable works. 4. Stephane Courtois et al., Le Livre noir du communisme: crimes, terreurs et repression (Paris, 1997) and translated with surprising promptitude by Harvard University Press (1999). See also S. Courtois, ed., Du passe faisons table rase: histoire du communisme en Europe (Paris, 2002) also now being translated in English and the last, spectacular and devastating book of the great historian Francois Furet who for a while had embraced far-left views. Le passe d'une illusion: essai sur l'idee communiste au XXeme siecle (Paris, 1995), a work, comparable to those of Paul Hollander but theoretically stronger, I believe. 5. Antony Beevor's Berlin: The Downfall, 1940 (New York, 2002). Jorg Friedrich's Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945 (Berlin, 2002). See Paul Gottfried, "Germany's War Wounds," in The American Conservative (May 5, 2003), 24-26. 6. In the past much had been written "pro et con" about that disaster. To me the most conclusive and reliable account appears to be a virtually unknown volume. E. Grosetti and M. Matronola, Diario di Guerra. (Monte Cassino, 1997), a thick volume with many illustrations containing the diaries of 2 monks during the events, as well as a few other documents. It seems to me the truth itself speaking. 7. Martin Amis, Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (London, 2002). 8. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Red Wheel is a masterpiece, in many ways the equal or the superior of The Gulag Archipelago which had made him famous. Three volumes (or "knots" as the author calls them) have been published so far: "August 1914." "November 1916," and "March 1917" between 1983 and 1997. Written in Russian, the first two were translated in English also, the third one only in French. 9. See II Messagero (June 16, 2002), 8; Corriere della Sera (June 15, 2002), 31.35; on slightly earlier and more politicized initiatives see La Stampa (May 11. 2001), 4. In fact conservative culture in twentieth-century It alian intellectual life is richer than usually thought. Let us mention the philosopher Augusto Del Noce, the film-makers Ermanno Olmi and (I would strongly argue) Federigo Fellini, the leading living poet, the Catholic Mario Luzi, perhaps the century's best novelist Carlo Emilio Gadda, and many others, who are often ignored in America. 10. Jean Raspail, Le camp des saints (Paris, 1973) translated as The Camp of Saints (New York, 1975); Septentrion (Paris, 1979). Among the "ecological" works Adios Tierra de Fuego (Paris, 2001); La Hache des steppes (Paris, 1974): Bleu Caraibes et citrons verts (Paris, 1980): Qui se souvient des hommes? (Paris, 1986) translated as Who Will Remember the People? (San Francisco, 1986); Journal Peau-rouge (Paris, 1975). 11. Alain Franchon, Daniel Varnet, "Le stratege et le philosophe," in Le Monde. April 15, 2003. The long and pretentious article is nothing if not bizarre in its ignorance of the field of American conservatism and full of laughable errors both in details and in general judgments: yet one shudders when thinking that this is the level of understanding of American conservatism by the majority of the French-educated audience. 12. Remi Brague, Europe: la voie romaine (Paris, 1993), recently translated in English as Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization (South Bend, Ind. 2002). His main works are on Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides, and others: one of his major scholarly works was just translated as Wisdom of the World (Chicago, 2002). 13. Chantal Delsol, L'etat subsidiaire (Paris, 1992) and Les idees politiques au XXe siecle (Paris, 1991). Among the others I would single out Eloge de la singularite: Essai sur la modernite tardive (Paris, 2000). ISI is in the process of translating some of Delsol's works. 14. Alain Besancon, Les origines intellectuelles du leninisme (Paris, 1977) among a dozen other works of "Sovietology." Very interesting is L'image interdite: Une histoire intellectuelle de l'iconoclasme (Paris, 1994). 15. Paul Virilio, La bombe informatique (Paris, 1997). Ignacio Ramonet, La tyrannie de la communication (Paris, 1999). Perhaps this is the place to mention the strange but interesting transformation of Jean Baudrillard, whose early books had been, almost sanctified by the left, but whose overtones in later books are anything but leftist--on the contrary they indicate an inclination toward traditionalism and the "small is beautiful" mode of thinking. See La Transparence du mal (Paris, 1990) or L'Illusion de la fin (Paris, 1992) 16. Armand Mattelart, Histoire de I'utopie planetaire, de la cite prophetique a la societe globale (Paris, 1999). 17. Paul Valadier, L'anarchie des valeurs (Paris, 1997): La condition chretienne: du monde sans en etre (Paris, 2003). 18. Philippe Muray, L'Empire du bien (Paris, 1991): Apres I'histoire (Paris, 1999). Note also his series of collected journalistic columns Exercices spirituels the third volume of which appeared in 2002. His Chers djihadistes (Paris, 2002) argues sarcastically that the terrorists ought to be more patient and moderate: the destruction of the West is being implemented by Western elites themselves, anyway. 19. Marcel Gauchet, Desenchantement du monde (Paris, 1985) translated as Disenchantment of the World (Princeton, 1999): Le Sujet de la folie (Paris, 1997), written in collaboration with Gladys Swain and translated by Princeton University Press in 1999 as Madness and Democracy: La democratie contre elle-meme (Paris, 2002); La religion dans la democratie (Paris, 2002). 20. Pierre Manent, Les liberaux, 2 vols. (Paris, 1986)--and which was followed by several explanatory courses. The most recent and important books (not to minimize Manent's monograph on Tocqueville) are La cite de l'homme (Paris, 1994) translated by Princeton University Press in 2000 and Cours familier de philosophie politique (Paris, 2001) which Princeton is also in the process of translating. 21. Jean Sevillia, Historiquement correct: Pur en finir avec le passe unique (Paris, 2003). Elisabeth Levy, Les maitre-censeurs: Pour en finir avec la pensee unique (Paris, 2002). The latter title is a pun upon another popularly famous French publication of the 1970s. What is interesting in Levy's book is that she is not primarily indignant against factual distortions (like Sevillia) but against the banning of independent thinking and the principles of rational common sense. 22. Thus I did not refer in the body of the article to the "nouveaux philosophes" of the 1970s which had rocked the French intellectual boat for a while. The untimely death of the best among them, Jean-Marie Benoist, weakened their impact, while Bernard-Henri Levy and Andre Glucksmann, after a couple of promising and felicitous publications, allowed themselves to be absorbed into the media industry, using more than once a discourse of demagogical conformism. Perhaps their main survivor is now the more serious Alain Finkelstein. Luc Ferry, briefly France's Secretary of Education, launched his career with a number of powerful critiques of political correctness, such as La Pensee 68 (Paris, 1988), written in collaboration with Alain Renaut; thereafter he wrote on aesthetics, Heidegger, philosophy of history, and theory of education. Philippe Nemo, J.F. Mattei, and particularly the Catholic Jean-Luc Marion (who teaches part-time at the University of Chicago) turned toward deeper matters, such as theory of art and theology. Even younger people emerge nowadays. Manent and others were attacked in the tiny but venomous book of Daniel Lindberg, Le Rappel a l'ordre: Enquete sur les nouveaux reactionnaires (Paris, 2002), but they responded in an open letter that seemed to put an end to the dispute. Among the best and most thoughtful publications which flowered in the last 10 years I will single out the quarterlies Le Debat and Commentaire. These are becoming the substitutes of Sartre's infamous Temps Modernes and others of its ilk.

VIRGIL NEMOIANU is W. J. Byron Distinguished Professor of Literature and Ordinary Professor of Philosophy at Catholic University of America.