[a_Turk]

I haven't read the "Closing of the American Mind."

I can tell you though, that we've founded 16 states of various size and duration throughout the past 2500 years. The Ottoman empire among them existed about 600 years.

I don't know what that book preaches..

Yet, I can see what the Chinese are doing with you, for example. These people spent 1700 years building a wall to manage us. That's their exhibited determination which lasted seven or eight times as long as the USA has existed.

We've learned the reasons for the advances and declines of the states we founded throughout history. When it's your states, it's personal.. You have not yet had the opportunity to learn any such personal thing..

Been there, done that 16 times. Maybe that's what you have sensed in your Turkish friend.

[Mortimer Snavely]

I've read two copies of The Closing of the American Mind to pieces. It's a critique of the intellectual bankruptcy of the American University, the effect of that bankruptcy on students and the USA by extension, and how things got that way. Essentially, it compares and contrasts the Declaration of Independence and the American intellectual tradition with the European continental thinkers.

Good stuff. Your Turkish friend was absolutely right. It should be required reading by every literate human being with an IQ larger than his shoe size.