Comments on: Allan Bloom and the struggle for the soul of the university https://thenewneo.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/ A blog about political change, among other things Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:57:19 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.1 By: Hippo https://thenewneo.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-126867 Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:57:19 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-126867 Dear Neo, Most peoples’ political journeys start on the left and head toward fascism.Usually ending in despair, before the realisation that liberation lies not “out there but within”.From This point on it is easy to see that the motivating forces in every person [me n you included, Liberal or Conservative] are humiliatigly base -greed,hate,jealousy.feelings of inadequacy, fear of death etc until such time as we realise this we will continue to pretend to be concerned about the plight of our fellow man or the desruction of the planet or that the oppression of the third world is just.When we can get over our fear we realise everyone is performing the same act and then we no longer need to keep up the pretence and the weight can slip off our shoulders.It is much nicer without it and life is lived much more fully in every way,Come on in the waters lovely.

]]> By: FredHjr https://thenewneo.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111851 Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:00:35 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111851 Why is it that more people do not understand the FACT that poor people do not hire workers? In order for there to be growing employment and opportunity, you must have a vital and growing private sector. The government cannot possibly absorb the numbers of people needing jobs. And the large corporations do not absorb these people. In fact, the Fortune 500 (or any other index of large, publicly traded firms) contribute very little to job growth. Often, they are net shedders of jobs.

Also, our tax policies are driving large companies overseas, where they do not employ American workers at all.

How is this situation endurable? It cannot be tenable, since it destroys a nation by sapping its vitality.

The large number of closet socialists who inhabit the halls of corporate America do not seem to grasp the reality of it all: without a vital and growing private sector, they too wither. Furthermore, it means that these people, however accomplished and “educated,” do not grasp the fact that zero-sum economic thinking is conceptually and theoretically wrong, not to mention that in the real world it is fallacious too.

]]> By: the elephant's child https://thenewneo.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111820 Sun, 07 Jun 2009 09:34:19 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111820 Ooops! I said “Lexington” and I meant “Yorktown”. Alvin Kernan was on the Yorktown, which went down at Midway. Actually it was the second book–“In Plato’s Cave” that I wanted to call attention to, for Dr. Kernan was very involved in the culture wars in the universities, but to read only the second and miss his story of WWII would be sad. “In Plato’s Cave” fits right in with Bloom’s book.

As to Obama and the Cairo speech, Scott Johnson summed it up pretty well at Power Line: “If Obama were General-Secretary of the United Nations, the speech might have been passable. Coming from the president of the United States, it was an embarrassment. Obama runs down the country he represents while puffing himself up as a transcendent figure. He humbles the United States while glorifying his personage. This aspect of the speech seemed to me indecent.”

]]> By: rickl https://thenewneo.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111808 Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:30:07 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111808 Richard Aubrey:

As to the middle class, the socialist Michael Harrington observed that the biggest resistance to socialism would come from the middle class whose painfully accumulated wealth would have to be forcibly expropriated. Presumably the wealthy’s accumulated wealth wouldn’t be sufficient—true—and the wealthy wouldn’t be too concerned, presuming they’d have a privileged position after the revo.

Part of the elite’s distaste for the middle class is an awareness that the middle class is not going to be mulcted easily.

In my opinion, that’s exactly what is happening now. I’ve stated before that I think Obama and his cronies are trying to destroy and impoverish the middle class.

It’s mainly the middle class who supports free-market capitalism. The poor support socialism because they want what they haven’t earned (and feel entitled to it), while the very rich support socialism because they fear some young upstart coming along and knocking them off their perches. Socialism will permanently cement the elites in power.

When all is said and done we’ll end up with a society that more closely resembles medieval feudalism than anything we’ve become used to.

]]> By: Stphnd https://thenewneo.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111724 Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:05:37 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111724 Neo-neocon, I heartily approve your taking up The Closing of the American Mind, but wonder whether we will not be left in the position of Malone asking Ness in the movie Untouchables, substituting moral relativism for Capone:

Malone: You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I’m saying is, what are you prepared to do?
Ness: Anything within the law.
Malone: And *then* what are you prepared to do? If you open the can on these worms you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they’re not gonna give up the fight, until one of you is dead.
Ness: I want to get Capone! I don’t know how to do it.
Malone: You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. *That’s* the *Chicago* way! And that’s how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that? I’m offering you a deal. Do you want this deal?
Ness: I have sworn to capture this man with all legal powers at my disposal and I will do so.
Malone: Well, the Lord hates a coward.

Will Bloom’s antecedents in Strauss’ Natural Right and History come next? If so, huzzahs!

]]> By: Richard Aubrey https://thenewneo.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111722 Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:48:17 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111722 I made this up after reading some of Lucius Beebe’s writings about the East Coast wealthy–mostly extremely new wealth–and some other work on the late nineteenth-century wealthy.
My guess is that about that time, money became the new measure of status. Before that, it had been education in humane letters (law, theology, literature, plus some public influence in some way).
I would add that being a successful general was a help. There was even talk of running Lee for president after the Civil War. But see Washington, Grant, Tyler, etc.
Money helped, but it was hard in those pinching times to have money without having land. And wealthy landowners were a class to themselves.
Once it became about money, the gaining of which is immensely different from the gaining of highly-valued accumulated classroom seat time, the folks who accomplished the latter were desperate to regain their status.
So now having money that you earned–robber barons–is inferior to having Ivy degrees. It’s almost…lower class.
The definition of status has been captured by the folks who have the shiny pants from sitting in class for so long.
Since they have the status by general acceptance, the folks who already have money want in. As the Brit manufacturing wealthy tried to marry into the landed gentry and get their titles. It was a swap of money for status. The gentry got more money than they had had and the dirty-handed coal mine owners got status and hunting invitations and titles.

Some things never change.

As to the middle class, the socialist Michael Harrington observed that the biggest resistance to socialism would come from the middle class whose painfully accumulated wealth would have to be forcibly expropriated. Presumably the wealthy’s accumulated wealth wouldn’t be sufficient–true–and the wealthy wouldn’t be too concerned, presuming they’d have a privileged position after the revo.

Part of the elite’s distaste for the middle class is an awareness that the middle class is not going to be mulcted easily.

]]> By: nyomythus https://thenewneo.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111720 Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:41:21 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111720 neo — don’t start turning into David Horowitz. I mean he has a valid point, but it’s just a tad overblown.

]]> By: Oblio https://thenewneo.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111715 Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:00:46 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111715 Good post, Ben. No question, there are class and status issues associated with “belonging” to an elite, highly selective institution. I continue to believe that status anxiety among the New Class is the most powerful engine of cultural change in the US, and in fact frames the “political” debate. I think it is more basic than politics, older, and more primitive. Your Ivy friends can’t dissent, or they will risk being thrown out of the privileged circle.

The best response is always to live productively, and it sounds like you are doing that. I envy your going back for your doctorate in some useful field. I sometimes think of doing so myself, but various obligations (e.g. paying college tuition for a couple of boys) dictate that I will continue to labor in my current vineyard yet awhile.

Go get’em! and laissez les bon temps roulez!

]]> By: Ben https://thenewneo.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111712 Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:35:43 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111712 I’ve often struggled with this. And internal struggle, the meanest kind. Am I right, or am I rationalizing because of vanity?

I went to a state school–LSU, Baton Rouge. As a matter of fact, I’m going back in the Fall to get a doctorate. Quite humble. However, the things I learned I learned. Functional things. The degree is just accreditation. If I didn’t learn the stuff, I wouldn’t succeed in the real world, degrees on the wall not-with-standing.

Plenty (most, in fact) of my high school friends went to Ivy League schools, where they got degrees in Political Science and History and whatnot. Well, I read books about political science and history all the time, and what I know about those subjects, for certain, is that all the “experts” disagree on EVERYTHING. Nobody disagrees about the basics of how to build a sewer system or bridge or how to analyze human blood to check for disease. Sure, these methods are always updated and tested and improved and there is art and the personal touch in everything, but gravity is still gravity and the human cell is the human cell. They function a certain way whether that way is popular at the moment or not.

Yeah, I really do think that certain degrees at certain universities are just a modern form of nobility. Entitlement and uselessness. Slightly more merit based (all my friends are indeed very, very smart and worked hard to rock-out the SATs), but it is still nobility in that these nobles are beyond good and evil. Consequences of actions simply do not matter, not even considered. All that matters is their perfect desire to be kind to the poor savages that have to work for a living because they weren’t born awesome and because the evil corporations exploit them.

And I don’t THINK I have an inferiority complex, but how can I be objective? Isn’t that the pain of classism? Inferiority despite rationals reasons for it? Let’s do the numbers (yes, I’m bragging, a sign of feelings of inferiority, but these are indeed the facts):

I make more money than them, I’m taller than them, I’m in perfect health, and I have every episode of Farscape and Buffy on DVD… as the singer sang: I can’t complain but sometimes I still do.

Yet, at dinner parties, my arguments are met with “You just don’t understand” so often I’m inclined to turn my work into a weapon. Well, are my facts wrong? Is there a fallacy in my logic?

Erg. OK, now I’m just venting. I guess I should focus on how, despite my primitive belief system of reason, logic, individualism, and empiricism, these people still like having me around. They are a lot of fun when you get them off politics, and on the important things I trust them with my life, as they trust me with theirs (we’re in a paintball gun league). Lefties would be perfect neighbors if they just didn’t vote.

Thanks for the vent! Oh, and I check your site everyday. I think you are a very fair thinker.

]]> By: Capn Eddie Ricketyback https://thenewneo.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111711 Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:37:55 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/06/05/allan-bloom-and-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/#comment-111711 I was a young adult during the sixties, and I remember watching with dismay the behavior of the campus radicals and the faculty and administration letting them get away with it. I thought at the time that when those radicals grew up and got into positions of authority it would not bode well for the future of this (former) republic. My only miscalculation was underestimating the severity of the results.

I have been pessimistic about the future of this country for the past 20 years or so, but didn’t think I’d be around for the payoff. Looks like I was mistaken about that, too, as I believe 52.6% of the voters of this country have sealed our fate. If I were an industrious young person I’d be looking at countries such as The Czech Republic to pursue the “American Dream.”

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