The Value of First Things: Three Communications

I like First Things because it’s smart.” That’s what one journalist wrote to me awhile back. Before that, another one told me of a group of journalists and editors who pay close attention to what we publish every month.

That doesn’t sound in any way noteworthy, except for the fact that these figures are solidly liberal about social matters. The social and religious conservatism of First Things they disagree with all the way—but they read the magazine. We haven’t convinced them of the unique merits of traditional marriage, for instance, and I don’t expect such a change ever to happen. But the respect is there, and along with it goes an admission that conservatism in this and other matters can be a reasonable and intelligent position.

In the current climate of liberal opprobrium, when an army of petition-signers is ready to declare someone who gave $100 to Prop 8 a monster, the first task of the conservative periodical is legitimation. To be charged with error is one thing. To be dismissed as benighted, backward, bigoted, irrational, and uninformed is, of course, worse. You can argue with someone in the first case. You can’t in the second, because you have already been deemed unworthy of a forensic reply.

Here, then, is one value of First Things. Social and religious conservatism struggle in today’s culture, which continues to favor anti-traditional expression (however routine and easy anti-traditionalism has become). Social and religious conservatives face a double task: arguing a minority outlook plus overcoming those who try to embarrass us for even having that outlook. The essays, opinions, and reviews that appear in First Things make that latter goal easier.

You know, I started reading First Things 20 years ago, when I was just finishing college, and I loved it. It did something important for me. I knew there was something wrong with the world I was in, but I couldn’t quite understand what it was. Neuhaus’ columns clarified one thing or another every month. That’s what I liked about it. I understood.”

The man telling me this was the father of a boy in my son’s Cub scout troop. A group of us were on a camping trip in the Georgia mountains last year, sitting around a fire pit on a chilly Fall morning sipping coffee while the boys were . . . well, we weren’t sure where they were or what they were doing. They’d disappeared a half-hour earlier.

I only knew a few of the others, and when this man heard I worked for the magazine, his praise was instantaneous. Clearly, the cultural diagnoses delivered by First Things were still a live satisfaction for him. He had found himself in a confusing environment, and reading the pages had lightened the confusion. They didn’t tell him what to do about his life or his world, but they did remove the irritation of not knowing why exactly something did have to change.

This is another value of First Things, and I’ve heard it repeated before (and so has Rusty Reno). People are discontented when they turn on the television, flip through the channels, and discover so many more unwatchable broadcasts than watchable ones. Why? They tune in to the presidential debates and end up thinking that so many meaningful things were left unsaid—why? They look at their kids and want to know what worldly pressures will threaten their souls.

Our aim is not to explain what is wrong with the world. It is to identify those things that prevent what is right and just and lovely from shining forth.

It would be an honor.”

The speaker this time was a professor at a small state college in a modest town in the Far West. I had spent two days with him as a visitor speaking to students and faculty during a philosophy conference. He, too, was a long-time reader of First Things, and in conversations showed himself a thoughtful and well-read academic.

We have expanded the essays on our web site to include short book reviews, and I thought he would be a good candidate for some of the offerings in ethics and philosophy that we receive from publishers every week. After he stated how much he enjoyed the magazine, I asked him if he’d like to take on a web review, and he replied with the above yes. His face brightened when I informed him how many page views we get each month (one million plus).

Hence, another value of First Things. With the web site, we are able to give intelligent but far-flung voices a chance to join in the national dialogue of ideas. We amplify the ever-more-needed evaluation of books, and we give college teachers an opportunity to render a judgment worthy of their training and knowledge.

As the First Things fundraising campaign enters its final stage, these interlocutors answer the question “Why give?” better than I can myself.

Mark Bauerlein is Senior Editor of First Things.