Future Tense

As The New Criterionembarks on its fourth decade of publication, the magazine commemorates its commitment to the civilizing values of informed criticism with the publication of Future Tense: The Lessons of Culture in an Age of Upheaval. Many observers assume that our culture is living through one of those "world historical moments" that Hegel talked about: a plastic moment when many of the traditional assumptions about the shape and future of the culture are suddenly in play. The Pax Americana of the last fifty or sixty years looks oddly fragile, the expectations about the economy and America's role in the world may well be challenged in fundamental ways in the coming decades. In Future Tense, each essay writer steps back to reflect on where we are as a culture: to meditate not only on the many challenges we face but also on some traditional sources of strength that we may have unfairly neglected or underestimated. The book's aim is partly to provide a cultural pathologist's report on America and the West's recent trajectory, but also to provide some tonic admonitory counsel about recapturing the civilizational vitality that seems in many respects to have ebbed away. Future Tenseincludes essays by Michael J. Lewis, Victor Davis Hanson, Andrew Roberts, David Bentley Hart, Kevin D. Williamson, Anthony Daniels, Charles Murray, James Panero, Andrew C. McCarthy, and Roger Kimball. Taken together, they reaffirm The New Criterion's commitment to fostering the enabling resources of tradition, the abiding claims of the "common culture" T. S. Eliot fought resolutely to preserve.