FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Alan Ryan, The Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2012) (From "Culture and Anxiety": "A society that embodies liberal values--that encourages economic ambition and emphasizes individual choice, that espouses the meritocratic route to social mobility and takes for granted the variability of our taste and allegiances--may be inimical to the values embodied in traditional liberal education. There is a tension between the self-assertion that a modern liberal society fosters and the humility required of someone who tries to immerse herself in the thoughts and sentiments of another writer or another culture; there is perhaps a greater tension still between the thought that some achievements in philosophy, art, or literature will stand for all time and the ambition to use those achievements as stepping-stones to something better. It may be a healthy tension rather than a simple contradiction; renewing the gentlemanly ideal celebrated in Cardinal Newman's The Idea of a University in a liberal democracy perhaps requires us to live with such a tension, But this is something to be argued for rather than taken on trust." Id. at 63. "[T]he United States is the most productive country in the world [Note: China may have surpassed The United States.]; its popular culture is an attractive to other countries as its technical expertise in aeronautical engineering and computer software. It is neither an intellectually rigorous nor a culturally ambitious society, however; outside major metropolitan areas, there are few bookshops, the radio plays an unending diet of gospel or country-and-western music, and intellectual pretensions are not encouraged. The nation has prospered without inculcating in its young people the cultural and intellectual ambitious that French lycées and German gynmnasia inculcate in their students Why should it change now?" Id. at 66. Food for thought.).