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How a liberal sees America
According to Richard John Neuhaus writing in the December First Things, Paul Starr of Princeton is exercised by the claim that America is in any sense a Christian society and that our culture is falling apart. Starr wrote:
And America’s cultural integrity is scarcely in jeapordy. From one end of the country to the other, Americans shop at the same stores, listen to the same music, follow the same sports, read about and watch the same celebrities—and largely honor the same ideals.Got it? America consists of two dimensions: The first and far more important dimension is the mass consumption of pop entertainment; and the second dimension, added almost as an afterthought onto the wall-to-wall materialism of the first, is “ideals.” Americans spend their time listening to intolerable pop “music” and following the lives of decadent celebrities, and, oh, and they also like “democracy.” Thus liberals (and neoconservatives) reduce America to the lowest level, and then, having done so, happily inform us that America is not heading downhill. Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 24, 2004 12:21 PM | Send Comments
Presumably the shared ideals are reflected in the shared shops, music, sports and celebrities. What does that say about those ideals? HRS Posted by: Howard Sutherland on November 24, 2004 12:45 PMGood point. I’d put it this way. For moderate liberals and neoconservatives, there is a complete bifurcation between the concrete content of America and its formative principle. The songs, celebrities, sports, etc., i.e. the actual content of America, may not be very edifying, but that doesn’t matter, because all these things are seen within and sanctified by the framework of democracy and freedom, which is the only source and criterion of value. It’s the same in Iraq. “Victory” for the neoconservatives is holding an election and thus fulfilling the idea of democracy; the fact that the concretely real Iraq is in ongoing terror and insecurity, and that we have no stated strategy that seems aimed at defeating the insurgency and bringing real order to the country, doesn’t matter. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on November 24, 2004 1:13 PMJust think: you too can send your kid to Princeton for forty thousand dollars a year and be taught by the likes of Paul Starr. Posted by: j.hagan on November 24, 2004 3:01 PMPaul Starr, Peter Singer and Cornel West: a real trio of Princeton Tigers. Yet another once-respectable American institution destroyed, as its clueless pre-revolutionary alumni just keep sending checks. HRS Posted by: Howard Sutherland on November 24, 2004 3:16 PMThe difference between neocon and liberal ideals: Neocons believe in democracy, but not in letting the wishes of the public influence minor matters like immigration. Liberals believe that democracy means rule by liberal judges! That is their “formative principle.” Posted by: Alan Levine on November 24, 2004 3:36 PMMr. Levine is onto something. There are two basic meanings of democracy: majority rule, and individual rights. But without a larger moral and cultural order to hold these two ideas together and put limits on them, they come into conflict. Individual-rights democracy then takes the form of rule by unelected judges to protect individual rights against a cruel and prejudiced majority. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on November 24, 2004 5:52 PM |