This book addresses the cultural dimension of the radical left's critique of traditional humanism. In the epilogue to the 1991 edition of Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education, Roger Kimball, who comfortably places himself within the conservative camp, observes that “the real battle that is now shaping up is not between radicals and conservatives but between radicals and old-style liberals.” Although I join that battle as an “old-style liberal,” I am less concerned with assaulting the radical position than in offering guidance in the quest for meaning in the arts and letters, understood according to the humanist tradition, as they sustain an attack from the political and cultural tendencies of leftist thought. It has not been my intention to contribute to the ongoing animosity of today's so-called culture wars by engaging in the facile quip or the rapid put down. Rather, I have attempted to adhere to Francis Bacon's counsel to “read not to contradict and confute … but to weigh and consider.”