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Allan Bloom - "The Closing Of The American Mind"

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Sled Dog:
Published in 1987, the book was intended to alert the public to the destruction Democratic control of higher education was wreaking on the minds of college students.

We've gone a long long way downhill since 1987.

I've only read the Introduction chapter, so far.  This book has been sitting on my shelf for a decade and I finally got around to picking it up.   

He begins by discussing how the Left has equated "democracy" with "openness" and being "open-minded" to undermine the previous American culture based on the concept of Natural Rights that flowed from the Declaration of Independence and was so successful in making America the great land it used to be.

First few sentences:

--- Quote ---There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.  If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students' reaction:  they will be uncomprehending.  That anyone would regard the proposition as not self-evident astonishes them, as though he were calling into question 2+2=4.
--- End quote ---

Anyone see the connection to our situation today?

Saying 2+2=4 is dog-whistling for the white-supremacisty patriarchy, isn't it?


--- Quote ---Stalinists also found the definition of democracy as openness useful.  The Constitution clashed too violently with the theory and practice of the Soviet Union.  But if democracy mean open-endedness, and respect for other cultures prevents doctrinaire, natural-rights-based condemnation of the Soviet reality, then someday their ways may become ours.
--- End quote ---

For instance, our new Soviet-style pre-determined election outcomes.

I am looking forward to this book.  I remember how the left vilified it when it came out.   I picked it up from the Salvation Army...and it's been sitting on my shelf for a decade or more.   


--- Quote ---Class, race, religion, national origin or culture all disappear or become dim when bathed in the light of natural rights, which give men common interests and make them truly brothers.  The immigrant had to put behind him the claims of the Old World in favor of a new and easily acquired education.  This did not necessarily mean abandoning old daily habits or religions, but it did mean subordinating them to new principles.   There was a tendency, if not a necessity, to homogenize nature itself.
--- End quote ---

The arguments from those promoting the overwhelming invasion of the US by outsiders argue that the US eventually absorbs these people and makes Americans out of them.   That was when the nation was actively and consciously teaching them that being an American was a useful and natural goal.   

goatprairie:
Many liberals inevitably turn into leftists. Leftists are merely the other side of the same coin with fascism. Fascists/leftists inevitably try to suppress all speech/actions that conflict with leftism.
It's like the quote from W. F. Buckley Jr. something along the lines of liberals profess to believe in differences of opinion, but are then shocked and alarmed to discover many people have different opinions than they do.

skeeter:
Read this back in the eighties. Still have a copy. Bloom called it 35 years ago.

andy58-in-nh:
The book is right behind me, here in my office.

I really ought to read it again, because what I see happening right now is a Revolution being conducted in slow motion by the people whose ideas Bloom, and also Robert Bork, in his book "The Tempting of America"  warned us about.

Bigun:
Been on my bookshelf since it was published in the late 1980's IIRC.

Here's another great one you should consider reading.

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