Some words of thanks

With this issue, The New Criterion completes its twenty-third volume. That’s more than 200 issues of the liveliest, best-written, and most informative cultural criticism you will find anywhere. In our first issue we promised a “dissenting critical voice” to challenge “the dishonesties and hypocrisies and disfiguring ideologies”that had become so deeply rooted in the arts, the media, commercial culture, and the academy. This we have done, with unmatched clarity, independence, and intelligence. We could never have accomplished this alone. The New Criterion is in a deep sense a collaborative effort, conjoining the energies of our writers, our readers, and an increasingly large family of supporters. As an intellectual enterprise, The New Criterion is synonymous with its writers. We can think of no other magazine that regularly brings together such literary and critical percipience. Likewise our readers. By commercial standards, The New Criterion is small, yet it looms large in influence. You, our readers, are not passive recipients of culture: you are collaborators and creators: the artists, critics, and policy makers who join us in resisting the meretricious and celebrating the truly accomplished. The same may be said of our supporters, who have enabled us to make a stand for independent criticism, free from the sclerotic pieties of political correctness. The New Criterion would never have existed without the enlightened, indeed the daring, support of institutions like the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. We could not have thrived for nearly a quarter century without the dedicated support of our friends. We are deeply grateful to you all, and are pleased to have this opportunity to acknowledge your help, above all the help of Donald Kahn, whose extraordinary generosity has, quite simply, made our labors possible. Twenty-three years have passed in what seems the twinkling of an eye. We look forward to serving you at least another twenty-three.

This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 23 Number 10
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