EDITORIAL

New Right: Future?

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This editorial can be cited as “New Right: Future?” Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought 2, no. 1 (Winter, 1966): 14–15.

Page numbers appear in blue: 14, 15

A prospectus is going the rounds heralding a new, slick fortnightly magazine, oddly entitled Future—the Future referring not, as might be thought, to science-fiction Utopias, but to the Second Coming of Jesus.  Judging by its editors and associates, Future will be National Review with the gloves off, stripped of all pretenses to old-fashioned libertarian rhetoric, stripped of glib Madison Avenue concessions to traditional American persuasions.  The spiritual symbol of Future will not so much be the Cross and the Sword, as proclaimed by its editors, but rather the auto-da-fé: for here we will find a blend of 20th Century Catholic fascism with the religio-political stance of the Holy Inquisition.  The essence of its program will be to extirpate, at any and all costs, all atheists and infidels, at home and abroad.  Featured in the magazine will be such past and present National Review luminaries and lay theologians as L. Brent Bozell, Thomas Molnar, Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, Willmoore Kendall, Russell Kirk, and Sir Arnold Lunn (doyen of British clerical-fascism); it is a measure of the Weltanschauune of this illustrious collection that the sturdy monarchists Erik van Kuehnelt-Leddihn and Otto von Hapsburg form what might ironically be called the “left-wing” of the founding group.  Only one non-Catholic appears [15] among the founders: Prof. Gerhart Niemeyer, and he, one presumes, squeezes in under the wire because, though a Protestant, he has the grace to teach at Notre Dame University.

We welcome the impending arrival of Future on the American journalistic and ideological scene.  It is always more exhilirating [sic]—and more educational—to confront the naked and unadorned face of evil than to joust with it hidden behind the camouflage of concession and demagogy.  We cannot believe, however, that there really will be a Future in our future; we cannot believe that the ranks of American businessmen, upon whose advertising and contributions Future will presumably depend for its survival, are so besotted that they will support a magazine that will lay its monstrous program so clearly on the line.  Surely, there is enough devotion to freedom remaining in American business so that this, at least, shall not pass.

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