Dr. Oliver provides valuable insights into the basis for the political and social changes in the West in the years after World War II. He explains and shows why the "conservative" opposition to those changes had failed time and time again.

Dr. Oliver brings an erudition and encyclopedic knowledge to his essays which is rarely seen. He writes in an ironic style reminiscent of H. L. Mencken. He's one of the few authors who can literally cause me to laugh out loud while reading. Here's an example:

"According to the *Washington Post* (11 September 1985) six men and one woman, all now in their early thirties, have filed suit against a long-haired, long-bearded swami who does business under the name Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, each asking damages of $9,000,000 for physical and mental harm sustained during the ten years or more during which they were such suckers that they were taken in by his spiritual claptrap. All seven were students in colleges in or near Philadelphia in the early 1970s and so ignorant and stupid that they swallowed sucker-bait about "spiritual values" and transferred themselves to a pest hole in Fairfield, Iowa, that is called the Maharishi International University. There they learned the sublime science of "transcendental meditation," a system of auto-hypnosis that can be guaranteed to produce simpering idiocy. They believed that by paralysing what brains they had they would become "Masters of Creation," able to transcend the laws of physics not only by using thought waves to bend spoons but by soaring aloft to frolic with the birds and play hide-and-seek among the clouds.

After assiduously practicing frog-leaps for a decade, while keeping their minds stuffed with transcendental garbage, they still had enough glimmerings of thought left to come at last to the conclusion that holiness cannot overcome gravity and that they would never experience the exhilaration of becoming oversized skylarks. From that, they were able to reason to the logical conclusion that they had wasted a large and precious part of their lives. So they are asking damages from the hokum-peddler who, having turned his "university" of mind-addling over to understudies, has, it is said, retired to the security of a luxurious life in Switzerland, enjoying transcendent peace and comfort, far from the brawling of court rooms."

Lol...

About the author:

Dr. Revilo Pendleton Oliver, Professor of the Classics at the University of Illinois for 32 years, was a scholar of international distinction who has written articles in four languages for the most prestigious academic publications in the United States and Europe. His first book was a copiously annotated translation from the Sanskrit (Mrcchakatika, the Little Clay Cart, Urbana, 1938).

During World War II, Dr. Oliver was Director of Research in a highly secret agency of the War Department, and was cited for outstanding service to his country.

One of the very few academicians who has been outspoken in his opposition to the progressive defacement of our civilization, Dr. Oliver has long insisted that the fate of his countrymen hangs on their willingness to subordinate their doctrinal differences to the tough but idealistic solidarity which is the prerequisite of a Majority resurgence.