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the criticism of Susan Sontag. Kimball's implicit reference to the future
is confirmed by an even more striking metaphor which he provides for
the cultural decline of the United States.
In
his introduction, Kimball retells the true story of Phineas P. Gage,
who was the victim of an accidental explosion during which "a metal
rod went hurtling through his skull." Surprisingly, Gage survived this
blow and "his intellectual powers were apparently unimpaired." Yet
after the accident, he became an untrustworthy person. His moral cen–
ter had been destroyed. This metaphor demonstrates that while our cul–
ture remains apparently intact, the sixties have left it "afloat but
rudderless, its 'moral center' a shambles."
By coincidence, a similar metaphor is employed by Kenneth
Minogue, the political philosopher, in an essay that appeared recently in
The New Criterion,
whose managing editor is Roger Kimball.
Minogue's metaphor is that of the meticulous executioner who is so
skilled at severing the head from the body that no one is aware that the
victim is dead immediately after the process.
It
is realized only subse–
quently that the apparently whole person has actually been decapitated
and lost the ability to function as a human being. Minogue believes that
this metaphor applies to the civilization of the West, paralleling Kim–
ball's view of the loss of America's moral center.
Minogue attributes this death to the implications of the radical femi–
nist movement, a theme which is not central for Kimball or Fukuyama.
Kimball has not included a portrait of the feminist writers of the
I
960s
and Fukuyama's treatment of feminism as a phenomenon of a postin–
dustrial economy contains little reference to radical feminist ideology.
Minogue, however, considers radical feminism a variant form of internal
subversion directed against the great institutions of Western civilization
that were created by "dead white males." Minogue's critique of feminism
involves two familiar arguments and one unprecedented conjecture.
Minogue contends that the feminization of the military represents one
latent possibility of societal decapitation. This experiment can appear
viable under favorable technological conditions with the current unthreat–
ening balance of power. Yet at some turn of events, the basis for military
catastrophe has been laid in the egalitarian fantasy that women can func–
tion as combat infantry against hostile troops in conditions of warfare.
Further, Minogue's review of the historical relationship between the
sexes indicates that the radical feminist drive for equality in the work–
place has brought with it heavy and uncalculated costs for women in
their other roles. The favored status of women in courtship and the
security of women as wives and mothers may have been undermined for
