The movement of the political pendulum doesn't characterize the general population, whose conservative instincts have been fairly reliable, but rather the volatile “intelligentsia,” which seems to thrive on changes of opinion and mood. Thus, since we have begun to mark our “progress” by decades, it was inevitable that after the radical sixties a conservative reaction would begin to emerge in the seventies. One of the visible signs of this reaction is the current editorial policy of Commentary. As Nathan Glazer remarks in a recent article on his deradicalization, Commentary in the early fifties had given some impetus to the formation of a new radical conscience in America by, for instance, bringing the work of Paul Goodman into prominence. Now apparently viewing the work of this conscience during the past several years, Commentary has decided it has had enough and is openly espousing the “conservative” cause. Thus Norman Podhoretz remarks editorially, apropos of Glazer's article: