If, on the other hand, you tried to help Soviet or Polish dissidents, took an interest in the plight of Catholicism in China, cared about non-communist Vietnamese, then you were clearly a black-hearted reactionary, doling out your lies only for corporate gold and acting ultimately in the service of the CIA.

Thus it was an act of historic truth-telling that John Howard lavished praise on Quadrant magazine at its 50th anniversary party this week. Quadrant has always been a small magazine, its circulation never rising above a few thousand. It got fitful, minor support from a few corporates and, as it turned out, unknowingly, a tiny subsidy from the CIA; perhaps the best use the CIA ever put its money to. But its impact has been immense.

Many people contributed to Quadrant's success, none more so than Richard Krygier. A Jewish refugee from Poland, he embodied everything that was grand and magnificent about Quadrant.

Quadrant came into being as a literary and intellectual magazine with a strongly anti-communist bent. Its pages were always disputatious and full of internal bickering; there was never an orthodox line. But its larger vision, of the glory of Western civilisation, integrated both its anti-communism and its celebration of culture at the highest level.

These were the two great qualities of Quadrant: that it subjected communism in all its manifestations to the most searching intellectual scrutiny and that it always aimed at the best of high culture.

Quadrant was a child of the Cold War. As such, it was a wartime alliance of not naturally compatible allies. There were deeply intellectual European social democrats such as Krygier and Frank Knopfelmacher, orthodox Catholics such as James McAuley and B.A. Santamaria, anti-communist trade unionists such as Lloyd Ross and Laurie Short, a very few establishment business and legal figures such as John Latham, great poets such as Les Murray and Vivian Smith and novelists such as C.J. Koch.

When the Cold War ended, the wartime alliance flew apart and Quadrant, under the editorship of Paddy McGuinness, has transmogrified into a more normal, high-quality conservative magazine.

It is hard now to recall just how exotic Quadrant was in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. This came mainly from its East European component. There was an urbanity and cosmopolitanism about these people that was highly unusual in Australia. They took it as natural that you engaged culture at its highest level but also engaged politics from an anti-communist point of view. This was mere political hygiene, their start point, not their end point, whereas so many Australian intellectuals, especially the self-consciously nationalistic, were a provincial imitation of the leftism of New York and London.

I had a particular love of Krygier, who related to me always as a kindly uncle. He was responsible for me going into journalism. More than 30 years ago, still a teenager, I attended a conference of the Australian Union of Students at Monash University. I was disgusted by its leftist extremism and drove back to Sydney in a burning fury. I wrote, as youth does, full of passion and purpose but with no idea of where I might publish.

A friend put me in touch with Richard, who was happy to meet a callow youth with no credentials at all. He read my article and said he was sure Quadrant would publish it, but why not try to get it into The Bulletin instead?

Krygier got me an interview with the then editor of The Bulletin, Trevor Kennedy (who was a great editor), and to my astonishment and delight the piece appeared in the magazine the next week with a slash line on the cover. It was the most thrilling moment of my life.

But what followed was more important: a couple of decades of deep involvement with Quadrant, the highlight of which undoubtedly was the Quadrant dinners. These were remarkably democratic. They were cheap and the food was pretty ordinary. No one was ever cut off from speaking; eminence was given no quarter. It was just whether you had something worth saying, as we discussed the crisis of modernity, Soviet policy in Europe, the role of writing in modern films, development models for Papua New Guinea; anything, really, that appealed to the group.

And the finest intellectuals in the world - Leszek Kolakowski, Sidney Hook, Malcolm Muggeridge - when they visited Australia always came and talked to Quadrant.

By the '80s, Howard was a reasonably familiar figure at Quadrant functions, certainly the most familiar figure of senior politicians. This is a paradox about Howard. Although, somewhat like Dwight Eisenhower, he purposely projects the image of the plain man, he has always had a lively interest in the world of ideas.

This made him unusual among Liberal politicians. Howard understood at some level that to win the battle of policy, you had to win the battle of history and fundamental ideas. I haven't always agreed with Howard's ideas - such as his views about Asian immigration in the late '80s - but he has grown and changed.

He is, of course, foremost a pragmatic politician who sees ideas as part of the political battle, but he has an unusual familiarity with them. As PM he has successfully waged the culture wars with the electorate. But he seems at times, with the exception of Tony Abbott, to be the only member of his cabinet who really understands what's going on. In his Quadrant speech he rightly bemoaned the continuing dominance of the soft Left.

This is evident in the universities, in many school syllabuses and in the ABC. But this is also a poor reflection on the Howard Government itself. After 10 years in office it has done precisely nothing to change the culture of the ABC.

Labor in office appoints its mates to powerful institutions. So do the Liberals. But Labor's mates much more often understand the politics of institutional change, whereas Liberal mates are often business types who know nothing at all of intellectual combat. As a result, there can be a hollowness to long periods of conservative rule, where the society does not get more diverse institutions as a result. Instead the Left, sinecured and cosseted at every point by taxpayer funds, falsely paints itself as bravely standing up to the conservative government.

Howard runs an infinitely more competent government than did Billy McMahon or John Gorton, but it is worth remembering that it was under those conservative prime ministers that the Left took its stranglehold on Australian institutions.