“Creativity is possible only as the final stage in a long, rigorous absorption of the teachings and discoveries of the past. The last thing we need for the future of our country or of our young people is one more lunatic smashing goldfish bowls in order to free the goldfish” [E. Christian Kopff, The Devil …
Trying to Fit In
“In the nineteenth century, secular education was established because many Christians were fatally persuaded of the myth of neutrality. They were told that there were many areas of life that could be studied apart from any reference to the authority of Scripture. They accepted the pluralistic nature of American public life, not as a social …
Intellectual Carnage
“There is perhaps no more dramatic index of the disaster that has befallen liberal arts education in this country than the contempt in which the new academic orthodoxy holds this constellation of ideas about the nature and goals of higher education. It would be difficult to overstate the resulting intellectual carnage” (Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals, …
Doublethink
“Perhaps Marcuse’s ability to reconcile liberty and dictatorship has come of age, and Orwell’s characterization of such thinking as ‘doublethink’ does not bring the flash of recognition that it once did” (The Shadow University, p. 96).
Deconstructing Nehushtan
“There is another sense in which we can ‘burn incense’ to a work of art. We can overmystify it, ascribing to it supernatural or religious functions The passage on the destruction of the serpent image says that ‘it was called Nehushtan.’ The Hebrew is rather ambiguous here, but the King James Version, in what scholars …
What Does and Does Not Constitute “Movie Reform”
“If a man were to rent a video, and it turned out to be a poor movie, it is not ‘movie reform’ to rewind and try again” (The Case for Classical and Christian Education, p. 33).
Sounds Like Some People I Know
“Many codes explicitly encourage charging a student with sexual harassment even if his intent is innocent . . . The City University of New York warns that ‘sexual harassment is not defined by intentions, but by impact on the subject.’ As Herbert London, a dean and a professor of humanities of New York University, notes, …
How Art Should Be Didactic
“Artistic images can appeal powerfully to the emotions, kindling pity at human suffering or outrage at evil. Art that is ostentatiously didactic, having no other merit than that of the lesson it teaches, generally fails both as art and as teaching. This is often because it starts preaching or lecturing in propositional terms instead of …
Drinks on the House
“At the beginning, this faith [the democratic zeitgeist] was full of robust enthusiasm and was not at all shy or reluctant about imposing democratic standards, relying on the abundant capital inherited from the older Christian order. The prodigal son did not run out of money on his first day away from home. The democratic institutions …
More for You, Less for Me
“Restrictions on speech are justified by the assertion of a compelling need to promote freedom for some by limiting freedom for others. To the code writers, as to Marcuse, freedom is a zero-sum game” (The Shadow University, p. 83).