When we began publishing The New Criterion in September 1982, we prefaced the first issue with a note detailing some reasons for wishing to start a new cultural review that aimed at providing a “dissenting critical voice.” In the course of that note, we remarked on the “fateful collapse in critical standards” that was part of “a more general cultural drift.” As for the source of that collapse, we observed that  

we are still living in the aftermath of the insidious assault on mind that was one of the most repulsive features of the radical movement of the Sixties. The cultural consequences of this leftward turn in our political life have been far graver than is commonly supposed. In everything from the writing of textbooks to the reviewing of trade books, from the introduction of kitsch into the museums to the decline of literacy in the schools to the corruption of scholarly research, the effect on th ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase

Log in

---

This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 16 September 1997, on page 3
Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

E-mail to friend(s)