Ezra Pound by Wyndham Lewis “My goal is to save the public soul by first punching it in the face.” —Ezra Pound The main failure of the rise of the conservative right in America has been its fear of producing its own brand of cultural elitist in the style and substance of the well-bred Reactionary. Its cultural contribution has produced no aesthetic vision, no artistic sophistication—only the cult of commentary, endless commentary. There we stand after all this time: no film studios, no high-end literary publishing houses, no museum board of directors of consequence, not a single Ivy university under our influence, no “great editors” of the Buckley–Hilton Kramer or even Lewis Lapham–George Plimpton variety; no Condé Nast, no sitcom/dramas of interest save so many rather twee “aristocratic” nostalgia series lavish with bygone-era minutiae.