Now for some good news. Just after we went to press in June, Standpoint, a new monthly review of politics and culture, made its debut in London. Edited by the distinguished journalist and historian (and frequent contributor to The New Criterion) Daniel Johnson, Standpoint eschews both the politically correct pieties that have insinuated themselves disastrously into so much serious cultural journalism over the past few decades as well as the tawdry commercialism that has rendered many hitherto vital periodicals indistinguishable from inflight magazines. There has been nothing as vibrant and engaging in English journalism since Encounter closed its doors some two decades ago. “Give me a point on which to stand,” said Archimedes, “and I will move the world.” “The intention of Standpoint,” Johnson wrote in its inaugural issue,

is to provide a lever ...