History is full of forgotten warriors who fought for freedom and lost. The least we can do is try to remember them when we wander upon their stories, hence the arcane title chosen for this column.

Kronstadt, I recently learned, is the name of an old naval base near the Russian city of St. Petersburg. During the horrors of a horrible year - 1917 - the sailors of the Kronstadt base, in what they felt was a battle against historical oppressions, steamed the Baltic Fleet into Petrograd. They did so to assist in the Bolshevik attack upon that city and, unwittingly, they participated in a subjugation of its people far worse than that ever imposed by the czars.

The support of the Kronstadt sailors was crucial to the success of the Bolsheviks' revolution. But as events unfolded and these marines came to learn that Communism meant not liberty but tyranny, not peace but starvation, they rebelled against their fraudulent allies. Eventually, of course, they were subdued, but in the interim their resistance slowed the tightening grip of Lenin's forces and for a while endangered his hold on power.

Rather than grant the Kronstadt sailors the honors of war, the Bolsheviks under Trotsky massacred many and sent the remainder into Siberian slavery. Whittaker Chambers in his autobiography wrote of the sailors, "they were the first Communists to realize their mistake and the first to try to correct it." Decades later, the defecting Soviet General Valter Krivitsky was to remark that the Soviet Union was in fact a fascist regime, and Kronstadt had been the turning point.

As a former leftist once enchanted by the rhetoric of socialism in the same way the Kronstadt sailors must have been, I am thankful that my early naiveté led to no parallel personal tragedy (as it did for some other Americans - see the review of Horowitz's Radical Son in this issue). But the story of the Kronstadt rebellion remains a powerful symbol, not just for aging hippies and thirtysomething Ph.D. students recalling an adolescent confusion, but for any politically engaged person. It is a symbol of the eternal threat of betrayal by those entrusted with power, and of the ever-present danger posed by demagogues promising justice and equality at the expense of freedom.

In this country today we hear no end of professions of high ideals emanating from the mouths of those who would either be our masters or contribute support to others who try. Lofty pronouncements and their accompanying recipes for reform come from all quarters: the academic left, the religious right, the corporate media, Hollywood, agencies of government. Inevitably we are asked to believe that some new restriction on liberty is a solution to this or that problem: campus speech codes to cure politically incorrect expression; criminal penalties to punish private sins; higher taxes to ease social ills. Unlike the Bolsheviks, our contemporary American collectivists rarely call for revolution; rather they would have freedom suffer its death by a thousand cuts.

So in memory of the Kronstadt rebels, we inaugurate this little journal as an effort devoted to fighting modern fascism and betrayal in our own backyard, and in whatever modern guises they may appear. From administrative cowards like Provost Yudof, who publicly embraces academic freedom while privately tolerating politically correct witch hunts, to collectivist mobs such as Austin's SOS Coalition, which would deprive local landowners of their property without just compensation, we will fight, through exposure and ridicule, and without regard to political ideology, the folly of official coercion and political hypocrisy.

A noted writer once termed it the duty of his calling "to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted." We will focus our efforts with this journal on the first part of that exhortation. We extend an open invitation to those who would join us.