In This Issue

My timing has always been lousy. Case in point: taking the editorial reins of The New Individualist just after its publisher, The Objectivist Center, has undergone three major disruptions: moving its operations from the sedate sanctuary of Poughkeepsie, New York, to the chaotic center of Washington, D.C.; changing most of its administrative staff in the process; and simultaneously hosting its annual week-long summer seminar.

One unhappy consequence is a magazine whose cover date now bears no relationship to the one you now see on your calendar. My first task as incoming editor is to bring the two dates back into synch—which means an accelerated publishing schedule for the rest of the year. To help make that happen, I’m enlisting a host of thoughtful, talented writers whose work has not previously graced these pages.

Bruce Thornton has forged a formidable reputation as a classics scholar, author, and social commentator. He’s a frontline adversary of postmodernism and multiculturalism whose elegant essays appear regularly on the Web site of his celebrated colleague, Victor Davis Hanson. In “Multiculturalism and Its Discontents,” Professor Thornton points out that our cultural institutions once helped immigrants blend into the “melting pot” of America by instilling the core principles of American individualism. But by undermining individualist principles, multiculturalists have reduced American society to clashing, intolerant, and unassimilated ethnic gangs and religious factions. As our individualist legacy has vanished, so has our sense of national and cultural unity.

Among those unassimilated factions are radical Islamists. What, if anything, is the relationship of their anti-rational, anti-individualist values to those of Muslims generally? Edward Hudgins, executive director of The Objectivist Center, dissects the means and ends of these fundamentalist fanatics, and challenges Muslims to conduct a serious examination of their core values.

The Islamist subculture is not the only one at war with the values of our Enlightenment founders. Robert Huberty of the Capital Research Center reviews The New New Left, a recent book that surveys today’s organized collectivist movement, and traces the ways in which it has morphed since the 1960’s.

But all is not so grim in TNI this month. Photographer Robert L. Jones focuses his well-trained eye on the hit TV series Monk,and sees something endearing in a quirky detective who must conquer criminals while containing pbobias. And Stephen Green, the Blogosphere’s renowned “Vodkapundit,” explains to the individualist wannabe how to cultivate a distinctive personal style. Steve should know: following his own simple rules, he became someone just like his hero, Cary Grant. (Well, sort of…)

I close out this issue with an all-too-brief tribute to my editorial predecessor, Roger Donway. After a mere six weeks on this job, I marvel that Roger managed to do it so long, and so well. I know that you, his readers, will miss him.
I only hope that I won’t give you cause to miss him too much.