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Germany was widely said to have been the most educated country in the world in the early 20th century. Culture and education were certainly held in higher esteem in Germany than in Britain. Yet this did Germany little good in resisting tyranny in the 20th century. To be sure, the masses in Russian and China were uneducated, but intellectual elites there had a fervor and passion for abstract ideas that outstripped what one found in Britain or America.

You appear to assume that I am against the diffusion of information. I don't think I am. But I point out that a society with widely dispersed information or access to learning may not approach culture and education with the kind of passion or veneration that Rose applauds.

Once people have access to something they don't crave it and exaggerate its value as they once did. That's only human nature. The world of learning and ideas is a part of our life -- or it isn't -- but it doesn't become such a focus as it was for some in the last century or two. And I don't think that's such a bad thing.

It may be that we do owe something to nineteenth century workers who wanted greater access to learning and culture. And there is something to be said for young people who seek such things passionately.

But I can't help noticing a darker side to some of the phenomena Rose applauds -- a dangerous utopianism, an impatient or uncompromising expectation of perfection in human affairs. He doesn't prove to me that that loss of that passion was a wholly bad thing.

The thing is that there has been no loss of the dangerous utopianism, an impatient or uncompromising expectation of perfection in human affairs. It has simply become more ill informed, more silly and more dangerous.

Intellectualism among the elites is not the same as intelectiosm among the working class. The elite tend to be silly and romantic in their view of the world and tend to thing of poverty as something appealing. "Let us all become the prolate." The working class intellectual looked around his cold little room and said, "Silly sods, let's all become bourgeoisie instead." And that was exactly what happened.

As to the Germans they were hungry. Hunger tends to strip away culture and learning until you are ready to say, "I will do anything, just give me food." The downfall of civilization soon follows. And yet even then they were less dangerous then the new breed of Environmentalist that are our current enemy because they wanted, above all, to live. They still viewed humans, (albeit they had interesting ideas on what a human was) as part of the natural order of things.