Posted on 06/19/2003 3:35:54 PM PDT by G. Stolyarov II
Your piece is 6500 words long or thereabouts. I'll have to wait until I have some time in order to read it.
Yes, send me $99.99 and I will send you instructions.
"In a 1992 essay for Time, Robert Hughes excoriated intellectuals for empty theorizing while Soviet Communism disintegrated and Chinese Communism was bloodied by the Tiananmen Square massacre. "The world changes more deeply, widely, thrillingly than at any moment since 1917. . . and the American academic left keeps fretting about how phallocentricity is inscribed in Dickens' portrayal of Little Nell."13 Hughes shouldn't have been surprised. Much of the academy—discarding both moral and scholarly ideals—has been hobbled by intellectual vertigo for decades. Before Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind came Robert Nisbet's The Degradation of the Academic Dogma, and before that the 1945 Harvard Report, an attempt by a group of professors to envision a new purpose for the university in light of wartime threats to democracy. The committee came close to recommending a return to classical education. "The goal of education," it said, "is not in conflict with but largely includes the goals of religious education, education in the Western tradition, and education in modern democracy."14
"Not even the heartless evil of September 11, however, could produce a similar statement among today's academic gatekeepers. The war on terrorism, in fact, has stirred little serious reflection on the nature of religious conflict or America's political and spiritual resources to counter it. Instead, university-bred élites have treated us to lines like this: "We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."15 That suggests not merely an intellectual crisis in the academy, but a moral one."
"Indeed, Allan Bloom argued poignantly that students were being denied access to the foundations of republican virtue—having in mind the Bible no less than The Republic or The Federalist. "A life based on the Book is closer to the truth, [because] it provides the material for deeper research in and access to the real nature of things," he wrote. "Without the great revelations, epics, and philosophies as part of our natural vision, there is nothing to see out there, and eventually little left inside."16 More recently, Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, cautioned against neglecting the deepest sources of democratic values. "Defending our democracy demands more than successful military campaigns," he told an audience at New York University. "It also requires an understanding of the ideals, ideas and institutions that have shaped our country."
"In this sense, the Western moral tradition represents a much deeper rebuke to secular liberals than to religious fundamentalists."
"As Cole warns: "A nation that does not know ... why it exists, or what it stands for --- cannot be expected to long endure."
"The purpose of an open mind, G.K. Chesterton once advised, is the same as that of an open mouth: to shut it on something solid. By being forever open on nearly all questions, the secular academy has severed the link between real intellectual inquiry and moral conviction. Schools dedicated to the liberal arts tradition, especially those upholding Christian orthodoxy, are in the best position to mend the breach."
Joseph Loconte is the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society at the Heritage Foundation and a regular commentator on religion for National Public Radio.
Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.
Click ... here --- for reprint information on Books & Culture. May/June 2003, Vol. 9, No. 3, Page 30
No, but you are expected to recite the Moral-Liberal pledge to turn a blind eye to evil.
LOL! You're braver than me. f.Christian is the only Freeper I am afraid of. I just can't work up the nerve to post to him/her/it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.