I’ve been pushing his most recent book which deserves the widest possible readership. It’s called “Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of my Time” and its available from Amazon here:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Cultural+Amnesia&x=0&y=0

It’s one of the greatest collection of essays I can ever remember and I heartily recommend it.

“Still looking for the western feminists” – about feminists, Western democracies, and the rest of the world.

For the record, I think I’m a feminist, but when they do those little charts showing the various versions of feminism, I’m in one of the categories in back, or in the ‘historical development’ section, sometimes called ‘liberal feminism’; the equal pay for work of equal value, give everyone a chance to try anything in the job market type.

I never liked some of the other versions, but I don’t let that stop me from calling myself a feminist.

The more I reflect upon the problems of modern day society, the more I agree with Cheryl that a large part of any answer will lie in somehow regaining the when an ordinary person could take pride in, and earn respect from, and everyone appreciated the simple dignity of, doing an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.

The idea that a person ought to aim for a professional career because they have the highest earning potential is as nonsensical as the idea that every back-yard ball player can aspire to the major leagues if only they practise hard enough. Parents should learn to accept that it is cruel abuse to push their children to achieve the parents’ ambitions. Think poor Bertie in Scotland Street!

I’d go for a high school program that leaves them with useful skills, a de-emphasis on the university as the be-all and end-all of life, and greater value on practical abilities and practical skills.

Of course, I have no idea how to make society-wide changes along these lines!

In the 60s and 70s many universities gave up ROTC. And many even banned campus recruiting by the military.

I think the fact that the faculties of Harvard and Yale decided that defending the country that gave them free speech and freedom of the press wasn’t part of their job needs explaining.

In the 60s and 70s many universities gave up ROTC. And many even banned campus recruiting by the military.

I think the fact that the faculties of Harvard and Yale decided that defending the country that gave them free speech and freedom of the press wasn’t part of their job needs explaining.

[And in one notable instance, when their allies were complaining about Spartans commanding a mixed force, the Spartan commander had all his hoplites stand, then called on the professions, one by one as he named them to sit down. After a time, no one was standing but Spartans. Only for them was being a soldier part of their self-definition and not a civic duty.)

But the broader point is well taken. If professors and film-makers run down the country and the civilization for reasons of professional advancement, that only pushes the motivation further back to the people who hire and promote them.

Some insight might be provided by the timing. We’ve always had the odd traveler deeply impressed by somewhere he visited. The abolitionists saw the Constitution as a deeply flawed document, but they weren’t anti-American. Even some of the early socialists were deeply patriotic. You get the beginnings of a shift following WWI, when it’s clear the early communists not only feel that class trumps country, but that they have, if you will, a class home outside the United States, and the same logic soon applies to some racists, whether the “home” be Germany or Etheopia.
But all this is fringe stuff until the 1960′s. In WWII, the universities had filled the ranks of the OSS. Samuel Elliot Morrison would write the official history of the Navy in the war. In Hollywood Capra would make propaganda films, and John Ford would be out filming in the combat zones, Most of the stars would at least pass through the services, and Jimmy Stewart would command a B-17 squadron flying combat missions against Germany,
Would anyone like to contrast this with twenty years later? And keep in mind that many of the opponents were not just arguing that fighting in Vietnam was strategically unwise–the Joint Chiefs might have agreed with them–but that the “Democratic Republic of Vietnam” was morally superior and was the side right-thinking people ought to be on. What was an eccentricity in Mark Twain–you should see his writings on the Moro Insurrection–was now the dominant position in American universities, and in our primary “dream factory.” The default position is the wrongness of America and the West. If we understood why there and then, we’d understand why today.

But then I’m generally inclined to blame the sixties.