Class Warfare: Is It Real? Is It Over? Or Has It Just Begun?

© Charles D. Hayes

“The common man is worthy of a better future, or else he is not worthy of his past.”

-- Jack London, 1905

Sometimes it seems that, for all practical purposes, the class war is over and indeed the rich have won. And then there are times when I’m hopeful that we can address the growing inequality in America with some of the aspirational ideals upon which this country was founded. Perhaps the first consideration here should be to look at what we mean by class.

More than two decades ago, in his book Class, cultural historian Paul Fussell declared that just to mention that he was writing a book on the subject of class was enough to cause people to abruptly exit his presence. In describing the way people define class he said, “At the bottom, people tend to believe that class is defined by the amount of money you have. In the middle, people grant that money has something to do with it, but think education and the kind of work you do is almost equally important. Nearer the top, people perceive that taste, values, ideas, style and behavior are indispensible criteria of class, regardless of money or occupation or education.”

In my historical reading of the subject, money and education are so closely bound to the notion of class that it’s hard to separate their importance. Money is clearly out front in significance since, for most people who have money, a good education has been easily within reach. In light of today’s observance of class, things have not changed; net worth is still perilously important and education is even more so, in an existential sense, because it is an essential key element to one’s quality of life. Our democratic values demand a liberal education as the starting place for responsible citizenship.

Recently I’ve heard the term class warfare called a dead metaphor, a political weapon, a distraction, and a reality. Perhaps it’s all four and more things to boot. Wars start for all sorts of reasons. Oftentimes war was far from the minds of those whose actions gave rise to battle. Imagine a peacetime warplane on a training mission that accidently releases live bombs on a sleeping community. War was certainly not the intent, and war may not follow if those adversely affected accept an apology and reparations.

The results, however, are the same. The dead are still dead, and what was destroyed remains so. Results are interesting and relevant, but too often considered beside the point in such matters. I do not believe that the rich people in America set out to wage a war on the poor, but who could tell the difference in the results, if the current economic conditions were all we had to go by? The rich, in recent years, have made out like bandits—literally so—while the poor are demonstrably poorer and the divide between the two groups is growing exponentially. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision heralded the decisive shot a while back, rendering all future battles moot. The results of thousands of other political decisions, at the behest and on behalf of the rich by politicians and lobbyists have resulted metaphorically in a fiscal bombing on all of the lower economic echelons in America. Reparations in the form of a more progressive tax rate are in order, but we’ve lost the power to make it happen. Even if it does, there will be no apology.   

As in any occupied state, however, there are those among us who will never give up the fight. We will continue to act as if we can regain lost ground. While doing so is not impossible, it seems nearly so. All you have to do to confirm this in your own mind is to imagine what it might take to overturn the Supreme Court decision that effectively gives corporations the right to buy elections—any election. Can the Occupy Wall Street movement change the political climate to a sufficient degree that our politicians will enact a legislative remedy for Citizens United? Only time will tell. 

Now in my seventh decade, I haven’t been able to rid myself of the unrelenting impression that America as a land of opportunity is, for an ever-increasing percentage of our population, a losing proposition. I make this observation after having published a book that posits a hopeful future for our country. That future will depend upon the baby-boom generation’s awakening to their impending mortality in time to unselfishly turn the tide toward a more positive outcome and help the younger generations take the reins of authority.

Nothing in memory compares to the political and economic reality of today, as most all of the people who lived through the Great Depression are gone. Of course, there have always been strains of political animosity so scurrilous as to have erupted, years ago, in the caning of a member of Congress. But today’s ideological divide seems unique in its naiveté. Too many people expect something for nothing. Tea Partiers long for the 1950s as a kind of social nirvana, and yet, in their wanting to return to that era, they don’t seem to have a clue about the tax rates in those days. America has always embraced debt, but a half-century ago we were much better about paying our way.   

I grew up in Oklahoma and Texas during the 1940 and ’50s. We were political conservatives, in conservative towns, in conservative states. In point of fact, we didn’t know anyone who did not fit this description, at least who was willing to admit otherwise. My grandfather, born in 1889, served in World War I and lived through the Great Depression. The hard times left a mark on him that stayed with him for life. He added to his savings, even when money was tight. He paid his bills on time and in person. He bought nothing on credit, even his homes and cars. He always paid cash. Since his death in 1981, I remember him as a staunch conservative, although he was nothing like the people we characterize as conservatives today, especially those active in politics.

I’ve always thought of my grandfather as the most honorable man I have ever known, and yet I consider myself a liberal with a capital L. My mind has not changed about my grandfather, even though it has changed dramatically about my politics. But then, the conservatism in his day was something altogether different than today. Back then, in my view, it was something to be admired. Political ideology be damned, he and those like him believed in doing the right things for the right reasons. A good idea was judged on its merits, not where it came from. He was fair-minded and beholden to no ideology for ideology’s sake. My grandfather was proud of his service in the war, but he never talked about it. He was a man of his word and despised dishonesty. He could add and subtract as fast as he talked. I recall more than one incident where he would read his grocery receipt aloud, adding as he went, only to discover it was incorrect. When he found an error, he would return to the store and either collect or pay the difference.

I’m telling you about my grandfather because he personified the best of what I remember about the 1950s and the Jurassic era of conservatism. Elsewhere I have written at length about the blinding conformity and racism of that period, and yet, as is true for most other people who grew up during those years, my childhood memories savor the good things. It’s only in hindsight as adults that we can appreciate the reality of the way things were and recognize the prevailing injustice most of us failed to comprehend, acknowledge, or fight to overturn.     

Today, America’s infrastructure is crumbling. Our roads, dams, bridges, sewer systems, and national electric grid require trillions of dollars worth of investment and maintenance to sustain our way of life. This fact makes the current nonstop hypermania about lowering taxes the single most absurd and disingenuous political position ever held by a political party. America in the 1950s was a lot like my grandfather in his fiscal conservatism. The bare fact of history is that the American middle class came into being because of an aggressive federal government, intent upon making a massive investment in a robust future.

We developed an interstate highway system, built great dams and bridges, and brought electricity to rural America. Taxes in the upper brackets were high, very high by today’s standards, pushing 90 percent or more. A progressive income tax ensured investment in the future as a way to shelter one’s wealth. But between the lower and higher brackets was a considerable amount of room for affluence. The earnings from ordinary jobs were enough to allow the purchase of a home and the middle-class lifestyle that we associate with it. Not so today. The American middle class is crumbling along with our infrastructure primarily because we don’t understand the nature of its origin and what’s necessary to sustain it.

Capitalism came very close to failure during the Great Depression, and it seems to come perilously close every time the magical virtue of free markets is taken as gospel. There is no such thing as a free market—never has been and never will be. There are always rules and hidden costs that favor some groups over others, and that’s why the government has to be strong enough and politically unbiased enough to even the playing field. Those who want to get the government completely out of the way ought to consider moving to Somalia. Government is by design imperfect, but if it cannot be depended on to do what it must do for the sake of all of its citizens, then democracy itself is untenable.    

What bothers me most about the Tea Party angst is the shallowness of their thinking. Coupling a wish for obscenely low taxes with a smoldering hatred for government is absurdity on steroids. In reality, government is the very thing that makes their lives possible, and extremely low taxes are not possible in a nation that needs high level maintenance and a sentinel level of security. I remember personally what it’s like to engage in such shallow thinking. I remember mistaking first impressions for reality. I remember taking textbook history as fact and political slogans as the truth. I recall being so overwhelmed by appeals to my identity that I didn’t see the bait-and-switch tactics of the politicians who pretended to aspire to my particular values while they simultaneously reworked the tax code in ways that made it impossible to sustain the middle class.

If I have learned anything in my years of intensive self-education, it is that things are not as simple as they appear. Look into any subject in detail and you will find your first impression at odds with what is actually the case. And yet, genealogically, Tea Party politics is based upon a clichéd attack on all things unfamiliar. When you delve deeply into what’s most troubling to the folks who vehemently hate the government, what you discover is plain old existential angst, the kind that comes with an inability to deal with too much diversity and so much change that the whole world seems out of control.

As a gun owner, I can see some truth in the notion that these folks cling to their guns and religion in self-defense. Guns represent part of their identity and so does their religion. They feel threatened by too much otherness, period. This plays itself out with an obsessive contempt for immigrants, hostility toward gays and lesbians, a disregard for people who have been out of work for long periods of time (unless it applies to them personally),and outright expressions of hatred for government programs that promise inclusiveness beyond their particular group identity.

The emotional fallout from the Cold War still renders millions of people fearful of anything that sounds remotely socialistic because they were sensitized to freak out simply upon hearing the word socialism. They are viscerally afraid of socialism, even though many can’t define it. Worse, they can’t seem to grasp the deeply ironic fact that the super-rich have already achieved a genuine form of socialism where their profits are capitalized and their losses are socialized. No matter what happens, they win and we lose.

Tea Party angst doesn’t stop here; these people are hyperalert for any and all reminders of their own mortality, the subconscious concern that lies at the core of their existential discontent. They are mortal, and the fact that they are is perceived as someone else’s fault, psychologically entangled as it is with all things foreign and other uncertainties. The fact that much of this anxiety occurs at an unconscious level that few people are savvy enough to understand doesn’t make it any easier to forgive. We’ve known this about ourselves for decades, but our education system fails to address this particular human weakness. We have Star-Trek technology, but when it comes to human relations, we are a century behind in making practical use of the knowledge we have gained about our behavior.     

Now, it’s easy to make a case that there are merits to some of the Tea Party’s arguments. Yes, the federal government is wasteful and at times very inefficient. But the inefficiency is built in by an inborn contempt for otherness that limits tolerance toward individual initiative when it comes to public policy decisions. It is a universal human trait to abhor free riders, and we create our bureaucracies with rigid rules to avoid the appearance of catering to free riders. As a result, we tend to paralyze the ability of bureaucracies to function with enough autonomy to make reasonable decisions or even meet their simple objectives. In other words, bureaucracies are bureaucratic by design. If Jack Nicholson were describing bureaucracies with the zeal he demonstrated in A Few Good Men, I can imagine him saying, “We want them that way. We need them that way.”

Notorious acts by government bureaucrats frequently make news headlines because secrets are hard to keep in a public agency. Large companies suffer bureaucracy too, but their dreadful actions to come to light less easily because they are privately owned and they can fire employees at will. One of the biggest industrial fiascos in our history surrounds the egregious failure of the work by private companies in rebuilding war-torn Iraq, and yet this continuing farce gets scant media attention. Bureaucracy is virus-like: it can flourish anywhere, public or private, when objectivity is lost and accountability is lacking. It will always be the case that the federal government needs to reduce spending in some areas and increase it in others.

Government and private organizations both respond to accountability. Both are dysfunctional without it. Both are helpless without human beings. We the people are the government. We the people are also private company employees. We can’t pay attention to one of these entities and totally ignore the other. It was never intended to work that way, and it doesn’t.      

All one has to do is look at the other advanced countries in the world to be awed by the radical notion that we are the only developed country on the planet that has generated such an aggressive and ongoing intense hatred for its own government. America has fallen behind so many other nations in quality of life issues and in such a range of other measures that we should find the reality of our standing with other developed nations shocking. We spend more on healthcare than any other country, and yet we are 37^th on the list for the quality of our healthcare and 36^th for life expectancy. We work longer hours than Europeans and enjoy fewer days off. We fall far below many other developed nations in quality of life standards, but when it comes to rising inequality we are way out front and picking up speed.

Homogeneity is a major criterion that most of the nations ranking above us in quality of life have in common. We pay a price for being a nation of immigrants. Our divisiveness has become so acute that we are no longer a melting pot, so to speak. On the contrary, our ethnocentric lumps are growing, but their size pales in comparison to the escalating strains of run-amok ideology now proliferating on the Internet. The price we pay for extreme diversity is a surplus of contempt for otherness. What’s more, the only way to overcome this condition is through education—a liberal or existential education, as I characterize it in September University.

We human beings are predisposed to act tribally: we have enormous strength for coming together as a group based upon similarity. If not tempered with a strong penchant for reason, however, we can’t do democracy, and thus our strength becomes a weakness. We have to learn enough about the peculiarities of the human condition to understand the precarious, conflicting nature of human relations and not become prisoners to our worst instincts. A liberal education can serve to dissipate existential anxiety because it offers intellectual and emotional thinking alternatives to the simpleminded blame game so often played by people whose feelings trump their capacity for reason. We must not let ourselves be manipulated by politicians who are masters of simple techniques that can cause us to charge emotionally ahead on cue as if they were holding a red cape and we were brainless bulls.

Instead of striving to be a country that produces informed citizens who live up to our democratic ideals and who know enough to look beyond superficial appearances, we allow ourselves to blindly educate toward the goal of employment. We give the highest priority to the intellectual pliability necessary to conform in authoritative organizations. At the same time we pay an immense price in existential anxiety because modern life is so complicated that it takes an extraordinary level of understanding of the human condition merely to cope without the felt need to find someone to blame for our troubles. We are creatures intelligent enough to realize that we are mortal and that there is virtually nothing we can do about it. Unless we’re prepared with a deep understanding of our nature, we lash out at phantoms and scapegoats to distract us from our anxiety. But because the results are so fleeting, the angst escalates in a vicious and repetitious cycle.

Uneducated people seldom figure this out on their own without a rigorous effort to learn what it means to have had the extraordinary opportunity to live as a human being in a world thrown together by happenstance. It’s comforting to learn from Steven Pinker’s insightful tome, The Better Angels of Our Nature, that there is a historical trajectory underway that suggests we are becoming a more moral and a less violent species, that we are indeed becoming more and more civilized. Progress, however, is so slow that it’s barely noticeable, except in historical perspective, and resistance is palpable.

In his book, The Social Animal, New York Times columnist David Brooks made a valiant effort to demonstrate the complex emotions that make us such imperfect specimens of reason. Critics of all political persuasions attacked him with vehemence because his depiction was biased and, indeed, imperfect—as if some books aren’t. Reason and emotion are messy subjects. They are no more separate entities than the notion of mind and body. What goes on in our heads determines who we are and what kind of a society we live in. That we can’t seem to figure this out is baffling.      

Democracy is an all-out intellectual enterprise and cannot be sustained without what most learned individuals would characterize as an elite education. America was founded by deep thinkers, and it is a fallacy beyond credulity to believe it can be maintained by an uninformed citizenry. Large groups of people carrying signs with misspelled slogans and inconsistent metaphors would be laughable were it not so pathetic and so inexcusable in light of what we know about education. Existentially we are an ignorant nation, and in spite of our soaring technology, we don’t seem to be doing much to alleviate that ignorance. In too many instances we are technically savvy and socially inept with regard to human relations. We cannot text our way out of ignorance.

When I consider the sheer intellectual enthusiasm and thoughtful rigor in physicist Lisa Randall’s Knocking On Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World, I have a hard time accepting the reality that millions of our fellow citizens not only do not believe in evolution, in point of fact, they still believe in magical thinking and base many of their opinions about matters of paramount importance upon the hearsay of people who lived when the earth was thought to be flat. Is it any wonder these people can be persuaded to turn against their own government and in the next breath celebrate the notion of “We the People” as the virtuous standard of a self-governed people?    

The Tea Party brand of hate-the-government ethos that is so virulent today ratcheted up in earnest with Ronald Reagan, who decried government in public even as he expanded its size. And yet, Reagan was savvy enough to raise taxes when conditions warranted it, something that is now considered an all-out abomination to those who clearly expect something for nothing and who never hesitate to demand lower taxes, no matter what is at stake or how badly the country needs revenue.

We are trillions of dollars behind in paying for things we’ve already consumed and for an infrastructure that is already in deep disrepair from a lack of maintenance and upkeep. My grandfather would have wondered why we didn’t pay our way forward. He would have been incredulous at the prospect of having a tax cut with two unpaid wars underway, not to mention a Medicare drug program that amounts to a windfall for drug companies at taxpayer expense. 

Early in 2010, Fareed Zakaria (a Jurassic conservative seemingly from my grandfather’s era) suggested a way out of America’s debt crisis, one that would eliminate the income tax for the vast majority of Americans. Zakaria proposed a value added tax between 18 and 25 percent similar to that of many Scandinavian countries—countries that are growing and expanding in an atmosphere pretty much free of pervasive government hatred as it stands in America. Zakaria argues that if we did this, we could balance the budget and pay for healthcare in the same fell swoop. But in today’s political climate, what—short of a revolution—would it take to do something so sensible? How do we get the people who have been quietly shifting the tax burden onto the middle and lower class and sending their factory jobs to underdeveloped nations to once again pay their fair share? Rioting in the streets comes to mind because in some places things are already getting violent and ugly. And if we stay on the current track with growing political animosity, a declining middle class, and rising inequality, the protests may get much worse. As this effort expands and leads to more aggressive incidents, the Occupy Wall Street movement may prove to be only the beginning of something much bigger.

Because it happened so slowly, few people seem to comprehend how we got here.  Over four decades, rich and powerful people, through political donations, lobbyists, and a K-Street kind of influence, have rendered our political system incapable of collecting enough in taxes to pay our bills, not to mention spending billions on their pet projects. But the seemingly sheer genius of their efforts resides in the fact that so many people among the middle class, and even many of those who qualify as working poor, whose livelihoods suffer the most in this kind of economy, take up the mantle of taxes as evil on behalf of the rich. It would be an act of genius, were it not so easy to do among citizens without adequate knowledge about the fundamentals of human behavior, namely that even though we think of ourselves as being above and beyond tribal behavior, we are still bound by it psychologically. Far too many people who are without an existential education gravitate toward ethnocentrism with or without provocation. They are as easy to incite to act against their own interests as it is to excite children about going to Disneyland.   

What worries me most is that, given all of the time and lobbying effort devoted to rigging the system in favor of great wealth, and given that the blow dealt us by the Citizens United decision leaves us so few options, without some traumatic event, average citizens may never again regain power over lobbied interests and corporate treasuries to further their own special interests. America is now a plutocracy, and the loopholes that have allowed some marginal semblance of democracy to exist have been quietly closing for decades through back-room deals sealed by law as politicians and lobbyists sell the rest of us out. Currently, the ideological bent of the United States Supreme Court makes this easy to accomplish.

Whenever I get very discouraged, I try to imagine what it must have been like to be an abolitionist in the mid-1800s, or a Suffragette a couple of decades before women were able to vote. Such thoughts renew my determination to act. I am encouraged by the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” for military service, as it shows a clear decline in one malignant strain of bigotry. I’m also very much aware that there is still plenty of time for the emergence of the positive influences I wrote about in September University, as the baby-boom generation faces up to its impeding mortality. The growth of this aging demographic is barely underway and will continue to play itself out between now and 2029. Instead of a war of among generations, as some pundits project, the baby-boom generation has it within their power to inspire their children and grandchildren to pave the way for common ground.

Lest any of us fail to realize the importance of speaking up or be reluctant to take a risk, I would offer this bit of advice from Steve Jobs. At a Stanford University commencement speech in 2005 he said, “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” This would seem to apply doubly as one generation contemplates their legacy and the chance that theirs will be one of outright cowardice if they fail to act.

I urge every reader to take steps to help reinvigorate democracy in America. Do whatever you can in any way you can. Make your voice heard. But first do your homework. Learn to reflect from your opposition’s perspective, and find what’s valid in their point of view, because it’s seldom the case that any position is completely without merit. Don’t engage in arguments based upon hearsay, popular culture, and the likes of Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. The Tea Party blames big government for the current economic malaise. The Occupy Wall Street movement blames big business. The truth is somewhere in between. Both political parties share the culpability, both are responsible. Putting a stop to the collusion of government and corporate America through special-interest lobbying should be something that the political left and right can find enough common ground to agree on. The public financing of political campaigns and free media provided by broadcast networks should interest all parties concerned about the well-being of the average citizen.

Moreover, we should begin to lobby media, as I argue in Existential Aspirations, to let them know that we don’t want to be referred to as consumers. We are citizens, and the only way we will achieve a just society is to accept the role and responsibility that comes with citizenship. Calling ourselves citizens will remind us of those responsibilities, and I believe the end result could be a dramatic increase in awareness on the part of Americans and a willingness to rise to the occasion.    

We should try to match and surpass the kind of rigorous thinking that gave America the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, because it’s clear that many of the people whining the loudest about getting back to the latter haven’t read it, or, if they have, they didn’t understand it. Simply put: We can’t be proud and boastful of “We the People,” hate our government at the same time, and long prosper. Hating our government is tantamount to hating ourselves, and self-hatred is not only self-destructive, it’s a poor premise upon which to found and run a country. 

American is the class we should all aspire to. By nature of our founding ideals, there is room for all categories of people, creeds, and beliefs. Our founders said as much in the documents they left behind. One can imagine their chagrin at having those documents touted for reasons they did not intend, by people who do not read them and feel no need to do so, but who presuppose they must contain support for their own kind’s well-being. Disabusing citizens of this notion should, in my view, be the first priority of education. We are Americans by class distinction when we buy into our ideals intellectually and emotionally. Remember, it’s not me the people or us the people, as in our group. It’s “We the People.” 

KINDLE Books and EBooks on Amazon:

September University: Summoning Passion for an Unfinished Life

Existential Aspirations: Reflections of a Self-Taught Philosopher

The Rapture of Maturity: A Legacy of Lifelong Learning

Beyond the American Dream: Lifelong Learning and the Search for Meaning in

Proving You're Qualified: Strategies for Competent People Without College Degrees

Training Yourself: The 21st Century Credential

Self-University: The Price of Tuition is the Desire to Learn. Your Degree is a Better Life

Portals in a Northern Sky: A Novel

KINDLE Essays on Amazon:

Aging Existentially: Getting the Most Out of the Fall and Winter of Life

America’s Greatest Enemy: Ignorance

Atlas Begs To Differ: Why It’s a Mistake to Believe in Ayn Rand

Class Warfare: Is It Real? Is It Over? Or Has It Just Begun?

Heroism, Cowardice, and the National Tragedy of Hidden Guilt

Learning A Living: Career Success Without Formal Credentials

Nostalgia: Why the Past Matters

Pursuing Justice: Foxes, Hedgehogs, and the Baby-Boom Legacy

Why Political Dialog Is Disingenuous

NOOK Books and Essays on Barnes & Noble

Portals in a Northern Sky: A Novel

Aging Existentially: Getting the Most Out of the Fall and Winter of Life

America’s Greatest Enemy: Ignorance

Atlas Begs To Differ: Why It’s a Mistake to Believe in Ayn Rand

Class Warfare: Is It Real? Is It Over? Or Has It Just Begun?

Heroism, Cowardice, and the National Tragedy of Hidden Guilt

Learning A Living: Career Success Without Formal Credentials

Nostalgia: Why the Past Matters

Pursuing Justice: Foxes, Hedgehogs, and the Baby-Boom Legacy

Why Political Dialog Is Disingenuous

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Pursuing Justice: Foxes, Hedgehogs, and the Baby-Boom Legacy

“Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.”

--Isaiah Berlin

Remember, when we were children, how important we thought it was that our games be played fairly? If memory serves me correctly, no one wanted to play at all unless fairness was assured. But as we grew to adulthood, many of us, like baby geese, were imprinted with the notion that the way things are is the natural state of the way they should be. In other words, we didn’t recognize social injustice in our midst; it was just reality.

In that frame of mind, one could observe uneducated people and, without blinking, hold their ignorance against them, even if there were unjust societal reasons for their lack of schooling. The same applied to poor people, for whom it seemed self-evident that they had made bad personal decisions. Racial inequality, therefore, appeared to be a natural evolution of poor decisions writ large. Moreover, many of our parents insisted on this being the case. And then, like a lightning bolt, the reality of racial injustice achieved coast-to-coast attention on television, featuring police dogs and fire hoses, and the time period now known as the civil rights era began. That was a half-century ago.

Fresh out of the Marines at the time, I was totally out of step with those who were concerned about civil rights. What many years of serious study have taught me, however, is that there is no greater objective for the trajectory of civilization than the perpetual pursuit of justice. No matter the subject, discipline, or cause, be it politics or economics, justice represents the ethical and moral north of human concerns. Simply put, justice is the ethical ground zero of history, and its whereabouts in any era is what makes history a worthy subject. Moreover, how we relate to the concept of justice sets the path of our lives and the wake of our legacy, be it good or ill. Sometimes it affects the world around us in ways that will ripple through time long after we are gone.

Baby boomers belong to the generation that awakened to the racial injustice they had grown up accepting as the natural way of things. Now they are facing their own mortality at a time when the demographics of economic inequality are once again becoming a front-burner issue of public concern. Today the baby-boom generation has within its grasp the ability to once again move the pendulum of justice closer to where it belongs for the good of the country. The question is whether or not they have the will.

 For eons people have been trying to develop insight into how we come to think about what is just and what is not. To better understand how boomers can further their cause, let’s back up and get a better sense of our perceptual differences in approaching social problems.

A Fox or Hedgehog Point of View

Isaiah Berlin, 1909-1997, was one of America’s most celebrated scholars and philosophers. In 1953, he published The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History. He did so to illustrate a telling difference in the way people, and writers in particular, view the world. It can best be described as two differing modes that all of us use to perceive the world in varying degrees. Berlin opens with this, “There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’” Berlin conceded that scholars differ on the meaning of these words. Still, if we take his metaphor seriously but also cautiously, we might get a sense of the deepest divide in human perception. My hope is that if we can put this knowledge to use effectively, we can move ever closer to a more civilized and more democratic society.

Berlin writes, “For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel—a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance—and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related to no moral or aesthetic principle.” Berlin tells us the former is the position of the hedgehog and the latter the fox, but he warns us against taking the idea too far because it will ever so quickly become absurd. Evidence of this can be found in some areas of academia where the subject has been pushed to such an extreme that it’s doubtful those arguing, regardless of their perspective or position on the matter, really and truly know what they’re talking about.

Berlin used this metaphor in part to account for the criticism of Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace. He said he first read the novel himself when he was too young and that the full impact of it came much later in life when it occurred to him that the work had lasting moral implications for humanity at large. When first published, War and Peace was lauded for its artistic style but criticized greatly for getting the Russian history of its time period wrong. Tolstoy himself thought that getting history right was an exercise in futility, and at times his writing seems to make fun of the effort. But to Berlin, modes of perception matter greatly here, and as an added complication he argues that Tolstoy was a fox who thought himself a hedgehog, or at least wanted to be one.

Now turn the question on yourself: Are you a hedgehog or a fox? Do you suppose your answer really matters? And do you imagine your answer will have anything to do with how you define justice? For the past few decades, the rage in academia has been such that most people prefer to think of themselves as foxes because of their romantic appeal and because foxes are said to know many things, which is, after all, a fundamental educational aspiration. Now, with the publication of Justice for Hedgehogs by Ronald Dworkin, all of that may change.

Dworkin is not all that concerned with Tolstoy’s work. Rather, he cares deeply about what he describes as the unity of value, the concept of justice that follows, and the realization of a just society in our lifetime. He cares about what you and I care about politically and, in particular, how we define the concept of justice and how we determine fairness. What is justice, who gets to define it, and why does our perceptual approach to the subject matter at all, especially in a metaphorical sense? 

So as not to complicate the issue further, I’m going to simplify the critter dilemma, although some in academia will surely object. The difference between the hedgehog and the fox is as simple and as complex as having an affinity for a big-picture view of the world or for a detailed approach. Simpler still, think about the left-brain/right-brain dichotomy frequently used to explain the way people perceive the world, or reason as juxtaposed to emotion and the role intuition plays in discernment. Considering the hedgehog-versus-fox perception in this manner, with the subject of value hanging in the balance, the former would argue that the latter gets hung up on details and often misses the point of whatever it is the point should be.  

The reason for such a fuss about perception is that these ways of thinking can matter greatly when it comes to defining justice and deciding whose word we take about what justice is. Do we let the foxes do it with many unrelated but technically correct arguments, or do the hedgehogs provide a single compelling vision? Or do we need a method, as I will assert, to achieve the best judgment using both modes of perception? In Expert Political Judgment, Philip E. Tetlock uses charts, graphs, and a long, tedious narrative to make his case that foxes have better judgment than hedgehogs when it comes to analysis and making predictions. He may very well be on to something, except when it comes to recognizing justice and injustice at a gut level.

 Whenever I consider an argument about the nature of justice, I’m reminded of the Texas appeals court judge, a few years ago, who refused to allow a DNA test in a death-row case because the law had been followed precisely and, in her view, the defendant had received a fair trial. She apparently found the letter of the law to be more important than the spirit of the law. She was technically correct, but morally bankrupt in my opinion. So, perhaps we should be wary of foxes not only in the henhouse but in the courthouse as well. To deny the possibility of justice in such a case is to deny that the truth is the truth, and that morality is moral, all the way down, as Dworkin argues. I find cases in which the law is satisfied and yet justice is still not served to be morally reprehensible, and this view would seem to be without a doubt that of a hedgehog.

Years ago political philosopher John Rawls laid out a prescription for a just society in A Theory of Justice. In his economic template for society, those who cut the pie would do so without knowing which piece they would get. It was and is an elegant theory. Unfortunately though, it remains nothing but a hypothesis because it has not been put to practical use.

In a similar elegant fashion, Ronald Dworkin presents an argument that confronts his likely opposition head-on with this assertion about aiming for equality of opportunity: “No government is legitimate unless it subscribes to two reigning principles. First, it must show equal concern for the fate of every person over whom it claims dominion. Second, it must respect fully the responsibility and right of each person to decide for himself how to make something valuable of his life.”

I suspect that arguing this principle will be more effective over the long term than that of metaphorical pie cutting, although, in my view, Rawls’ and Dworkin’s theories are superbly compatible. Both pay much-needed attention to the growing inequality in America. Rawls was for maximizing the minimum, in other words making the bottom economic rung in society livable and respectable for all who might find themselves living there for whatever reason. Dworkin’s two principles, if taken seriously, achieve the same objective.

Dworkin contends that what we have in life by way of resources and opportunity depends, in part, on the laws of the place where we are governed, and that if conditions leave some citizens impoverished, it is not a satisfactory answer to say that “people must take responsibility for their own fate.” He says, in essence, that people are not responsible for their genetic endowment or their innate talent. Moreover, just as a demand for an equal distribution of wealth violates his principle for equality, so does ignoring those impoverished through no fault of their own.

So, do you think the government should be concerned with universal justice? If, as we claim, we are a nation of laws, shouldn’t the government be concerned with how its citizens are affected by its laws? Would a game be fair if writing the rules were always the prerogative of the winners? This surely seems the case today with Washington’s legions of special-interest lobbyists. When was the last time that you had a personal impact on a piece of legislation? No lobbyist to represent your views? Then join the rapidly growing club of average Americans whose legislative influence is nil and whose grasp on any sustainable slice or portion of the economic pie is less and less tenable.

Dworkin begins by acknowledging that politics is an extension of law, that both law and politics are corrosive, that both are subject to interpretation, and that “the moral realm is the realm of argument, not brute, raw fact.” Dignity and self-respect, he says, are indispensable conditions of a good life. And further, David Hume’s moral philosophical assertion that we cannot determine an ought from an is, is itself a moral judgment—one that Dworkin says shows morality to be a separate aspect of human knowledge which, because of its uniqueness, presents itself with its own standards for interpretation.

Now, depending on your view, this idea may take a while to take root. It did for me. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and I find it inspiring and compelling in some ways but troubling in others. I’ve been a strong advocate for the reasoning side of life for decades, while simultaneously acknowledging how much the act of reasoning depends upon our emotions. This is something I sensed even before I began writing about the subject of self-education, and the scientific research of recent years bears out the interwoven relationship between reason and emotion with overwhelming evidence that they are indeed not separate entities.

I have always felt an affinity for the hedgehog, but confess having wished at times to be more of a fox. We are all a little of both to some degree. But understanding how we come to believe what we accept as true in important matters, such as how we define or determine what justice is and should be, is not a trivial quest. Having said this, however, I’m not fully confident that talk between foxes and hedgehogs will yield much beyond confrontation. The way we view and experience the world is so powerful and pervasive that it takes an extraordinary degree of resolve to change or alter one’s mind about issues fundamental to one’s perception. Not that I think it’s impossible, by any means, it’s just that both sides have to be so determined and dedicated to getting to the truth of the matters at hand that they can care more about the better argument than about who presents it.

To agree on vying for the better argument and common ground is clearly possible if participants are willing and sincere. Taking the idea further, it seems to me a very practical expectation that the journey of the fox in learning many things may at some point reach a critical mass resulting in an explosive revelation which becomes a single compelling vision. I make this argument on the basis of my personal experience, as it happens to me frequently. Even though I identify with having the hedgehog’s perception, who is to say that this fox-hedgehog convergence is not a common experience? After all, how many young people go off to college and come back home seeming to be out of touch with those they left behind? Education changes us, and indeed, if that were not the case, why would we bother pursuing it?

That we as individuals have a moral sense of right and wrong is a given, unless we are sociopaths or psychopaths or are in some other sense mentally ill. We don’t need to reason to know that murder is wrong or even that lying is unacceptable, and we know instinctively that torturing babies is out of the question. But how do we know these assumptions to be true? Was it because our parents taught us that these things are wrong or is it because of an innate sense we are born with?

The way I read the evidence is that we do have an innate moral sense. Infants show signs of distress upon hearing others in distress. Moreover, we know that when empathy is encouraged it can be developed and further expanded, which means simply that it can be learned and deepened. So, should I take this as evidence that the perceptual differences between hedgehogs and foxes can be diminished to the point of achieving a common ground in agreement about moral issues? Maybe, maybe not, but let’s assume the better argument is what matters here and see where it leads us.

Christians typically object to Dworkin’s assertion that those who “mechanically and unthinkingly” surrender their ethical authority to televangelists and who vote as they are told lead inauthentic lives, and yet, this is something Immanuel Kant warned of repeatedly and vociferously. To surrender one’s reasoning faculties, and therefore one’s conscience by default, is an act of subversion against the very notion of integrity. When weighed against the virtue of one’s duty towards others, it is comparable in Kant’s view to an act of treason. Kant’s notion of virtue is bound to the proposition that there is indeed a unity of value and a sense of duty that is sacrosanct.    

Under the product description of Justice for Hedgehogs on Amazon.com is a succinct statement that captures the book’s very essence: “That value in all of its forms is one big thing: that what truth is, life means, morality requires, and justice demands are different aspects of the same large question.” Perhaps the crux of achieving common ground here is whether or not those who identify with the fox can accept this view as a valid statement.

To Ronald Dworkin, human dignity is a prerequisite for a just society, and to achieve this end requires that government must treat all of its citizens with equal concern. Otherwise, the very notion of human dignity is degraded and devalued. He tells us that justice doesn’t threaten our liberty; to the contrary, it expands it and gives rise to the very notion of self-respect.

What I infer from his book, quite simply, is that some people get the point of justice and some don’t. Some get hung up in the details and miss the point altogether. In other words, some people get what it means to have been afforded the life of a human being and others don’t. Those who don’t get it, very often become enamored with trivialities that turn out near life’s end to have been meaningless distractions from the things that really matter.

Dworkin argues that we should take our lives seriously to the point of ensuring that they don’t amount to wasted opportunity. In my view, this is not possible without a concentrated effort to act responsibly when it comes to forming one’s opinions and striving to develop a sensibility in which one’s standard for veracity depends upon the better argument and not its source. Living one’s life in a media echo chamber leads to intellectual stultification. What Dworkin is talking about here is not self-help careerism; it is about doing something that counts in the scheme of things with relation to our fellow citizens.

Just as we are not responsible for our genetic heritage, neither are we responsible for our default perceptional orientation for how we view the world. We don’t make a choice at a specific point of time in our lives to posses the metaphorical perceptual attributes of a fox or a hedgehog. But most people would agree, I trust, that we do have a moral responsibility to bring to bear the best judgment that we can in resolving important matters. Understanding our common perceptual differences in apprehending the world should help. Regardless of how we are predisposed to perceive the world, it should not keep us from discerning the truth, not on the basis of technical accuracy alone but with a moral measure defensible at every challenge point. People get caught up in the details of living and miss the perspective that offers existential meaning to the struggle. Is the good in life something we can all agree on or not?

I suspect that as we age, regardless of our temperament and disposition toward the fox or hedgehog dichotomy, we are drawn toward the need to make sense of our lives. Dworkin argues persuasively that we have “a sovereign ethical responsibility to make something of our own lives, as a painter makes something valuable on his canvas.” Further, he says, we must find our own value in the act of living well. This doesn’t seem possible to me without an overt attempt to put one’s life in perspective and to do so by examining our own lives in context and in relation to the lives of others—not just our neighbors but people the world over. For he says, “we cannot adequately respect our own humanity unless we respect humanity in others.”

I’m drawn more and more to the compelling idea that the hedgehog perspective is less of an intellectual posture and more of a visceral stance: an internal sense or an emotional and intuitive feeling steeped in empathy and sympathetic to the notion that good is a noun. This is something I think we know, even when we are at a sudden loss to explain it. I’m not sure how or why some people are attuned and sensitive to the notion of fairness and justice to such a degree that they are forever on the alert to call attention to injustice. Nevertheless, I’m grateful that these people are not so caught up with the details of life that they stop paying attention to the notion of human dignity and the need to maintain it. Dworkin says such folks may not achieve moral truth in life, but they do seek it, and in my view that’s a critical component to a good life.

Morality Beyond the Fox and the Hedgehog

A paper by Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham of the University of Virginia, titled “When Morality Opposes Justice” has received lots of attention in the past few years. In addressing the subject of morality, the work is considered cutting edge. Haidt and Graham identify five pillars that constitute the moral foundation for American culture. They are: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Haidt and Graham argue that liberals use only the first two pillars for making moral judgments, choosing to focus on caring and fairness, but conservatives use all five. For conservatives, all five pillars matter, but they place greater emphasis on in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. I suspect that conservatives believe justice is in large part a consequence of these three pillars, hence their lack of emphasis on the pillar of fairness itself.

Now, when I compare this research with Dworkin’s notion of the unity of value, I find that one cannot defend value as one big thing without using all five of Haidt and Graham’s moral pillars. Give it some thought. All of these components are in play when we try to capture the unity of value.

Can you envision a just society devoid of the attributes of any one of these pillars? I can’t. And what if someone argues that some people’s idea of the good may actually be bad? What if, for example, they advocate getting rid of society’s weakest members? This is the same argument that is often used to counter Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative. But Dworkin’s two-fold universal principle of a legitimate government rules this out. The government can’t show and demonstrate equal concern for some individuals by harming them, and if it were tried, the case would not stand up to the test of the better argument. Now some might argue that we should not concern ourselves with the well- being of criminals and psychopaths, but then that would miss the point as well because what they do affects everyone else.

I’m enthusiastic about Dworkin’s book for the same reason I am about Haidt and Graham’s pillar theory. Both invite the kind of discussion in which a substantial number of points can be made about issues of value without pushing the participants’ political hot buttons—an important prerequisite for objective negotiation. It’s possible to discuss the five pillars and agree that each is a value in its own way and that it is vital to society, whether or not you agree about the particulars that follow at length. It’s also easy to imagine how any society without even one of the five pillars would be seriously impaired in some way, regardless of which pillar was missing. Similarly Dworkin’s two principles are defensible, regardless of the details to follow, and as such both the two-fold principle and the five-pillar theory can be starting points for establishing common ground. Both enable the beginning of clinical discussion with the possibility of agreeing on small issues before bigger problems are dealt with.

While discussing Justice for Hedgehogs in a public forum recently, it occurred to me that one of the most difficult hurdles to achieving common ground and thus reaching common agreement is that even when agreement is reached, the argument continues without taking the agreed upon changes into account. For example, imagine that a discussion about economic justice is taking place between a liberal and a conservative. The two are very far apart philosophically on the subject of salaries and wages, and yet they are both able to agree that the compensation of CEOs at the top of an organization should be tied to the pay at the bottom of the company. That is, when the CEO gets a pay raise, everyone else does too.

Okay great, but then they begin again to argue about economic fairness in general, failing to consider that their agreed upon change has taken place. Now, they don’t do this because they don’t want to; it’s just a very hard thing to do— something most of us are not even accustomed to trying. It takes some imagination to consider how the changes would ripple through society if this tethering of compensation became the law of the land. The original positions held on both sides could shift so dramatically that the effects would be stunning and warrant follow-up arguments that neither side in its wildest dreams would have considered beforehand. Okay, so this is hard, but it’s still not rocket science, and it’s certainly not impossible.

Consider the enormous computer power we have in the United States, and imagine what the results might be if we created models with supercomputers to work out the rippling differences in each congressional point of agreement on the part of opposing parties. The changes made possible by potential agreements could be studied and put in place, so to speak, allowing the discussions to begin anew with new starting points. Of course, one might argue that there would be additional disagreement about the algorithms determining such models, and that’s as it should be, but this would still seem a much better path toward solving the great many divisive issues that now confront us. These models would likely never work perfectly, but they would be a good start. The status quo is simply not acceptable to most Americans, and the very notion of achieving economic justice is getting to be a serious subject by nature of practical circumstance. The American middle class may soon achieve endangered species status.

The Baby-Boom Legacy

For several years now, my interest in self-education has evolved into a fascination with learning, aging, and the notion of whether or not acquiring wisdom is something we can count on if we pursue it. No doubt these topics intrigue me because I’m approaching 70 with what seems like an exponential increase in speed each year. My main area of interest these days is the subject of generativity and, in particular, the forthcoming legacy of the baby-boom generation and how that legacy will square with the notion of justice.

You see, I believe the boomers down deep are still the people who kicked up such a fuss about injustice in the 1960s, and I’m betting they’ll awaken once again before they pass on. The first time they became aware of injustice, they were young and idealistic; this time, if it happens, it will be because they are wise enough to sense what’s ahead and still idealistic enough to believe they can make a difference. I believe the same empathetic feelings that enabled them to awaken from the illusion of justice in the 1950s and ’60s to the reality of racial injustice will resurface to meet the challenges their grandchildren will be faced with and that they themselves are in part responsible for.

Today we face so many problems in so many areas of life that once you start a list, it’s seems impossible to stop adding to it. The engineered structures that we depend on for our very way of life are crumbling; roads, dams, bridges, water and sewer systems, and electrical grids all across America are reaching their sustainable limits. Trillions of dollars are required for their repair, or, we are told, the near future will begin to experience one catastrophe of infrastructure after another. If these problems were not enough, there is the matter of being a debtor nation, of insufficient funds to sustain healthcare, Medicare, and Social Security, and of inadequate plans for addressing climate change, the threat of terrorism, and foreign wars. All of this just for starters, and we can’t even generate enough political goodwill to tackle any of these issues with the amount of effort and funds needed to fully address them.

Even though we have the lowest taxes in nearly a half- century, our politicians don’t have the backbone to raise taxes equal to our debt. Of course, this is because they know that if they do propose such solutions, they will feel the full measure of political backlash from the moneyed interests that protect the status quo. We have achieved a perversion of the Golden Rule—those with the gold make the rules, period. It is my opinion and sincere hope that those of us near the end of our lives can bring enough pressure to bear to turn the tide and realign the scales of economic and social justice before our time is up.

In September University: Summoning Passion for an Unfinished Life, I devote several chapters to creating an atmosphere for achieving common ground politically, up to and including starting your own Sept-U discussion groups. Early on, September University offers this caveat: “Never before has the quality of our lives been so dependent upon wise counsel. And yet, in spite of your best intentioned educational theories, our long history of championing reason has created the false impression that we always reason first and then act, failing to appreciate the fact that what we actually do most of the time is the reverse. We depend upon an emotionally internalized moral guidance system to navigate our way through daily life. We act intuitively, relying on stored memory receptors in the emotional regions of the brain, and then we reason away the aftermath of our actions with explanations that sound profound but very often have little to do with the real motive.” Since we know that we behave this way, we need desperately to compensate for this Stone Age predisposition, and my guess is that Ronald Dworkin and Jonathan Haidt would argue as I do that justice demands it.

Another bit of advice from September University: “Today each of us as an individual has the communication capabilities of a Thomas Paine pamphleteer writ large. If only a small percentage of us take up the mantle of Sept-U with the notion of shaping the future, we will represent a revolutionary force that has to be reckoned with.”

Imagine getting together with small groups of people whom you respect but who have opposing political views. You establish an expectation of civility and hold your discussion with one fundamental rule for participation: each side must agree to yield to the better argument, regardless of who is presenting it. You begin with the five moral pillars and Dworkin’s two principles of government concern. Take one issue in the simplest description possible, apply the moral pillars as they pertain to the issue and the two principles as they apply, and see if there is any common ground that can be easily agreed upon. Once that is achieved, try your best to determine how those changes when implemented might change the very nature of the argument before proceeding to another issue.

Achieving a just society depends on large numbers of people engaged in a serious effort to create a better world. I believe the baby-boom generation can leave a lasting legacy that restores the concept of justice at the center of American politics, and the aim of this piece was and is about creating a way to move in that direction. It’s about getting on with what matters in life and keeping these things at the forefront of our attention.

My existential take on the notion of the unity of value mirrors Dworkin’s idea that morality deserves to be its own independent, stand-alone field of inquiry. I agree that the moral realm is an independent field precisely because everything thing we do, hope, feel, experience, or strive for, in our pathetically brief and never-to-be-repeated lives, depends upon what we and others do in this territory. In a nutshell, it’s why Immanuel Kant asserted that “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe: the starry skies above and the moral law within.” Weigh this alongside the certitude that death awaits us all and that what we did here, while we were here, matters to those we will leave behind. What we ought to do in life is an existential conundrum, the crux of which is a field unto itself, because we are entities of selves and what we do with and unto others has to be the point of it all, if there is a point to be had.

It would be a sad legacy to have lived a life as a human being without ever coming close to discerning that the very essence of humanity is in our uniqueness as a species and that this quality depends upon—in fact, can’t exist without—the relentless pursuit of justice. When we fall short and become mesmerized by the details, we are so easily fooled by fox-like perception that we focus on things like the Gross Domestic Product instead of the well-being of our fellow Americans, and we confuse the minimum wage with the notion of human dignity and livable conditions.

A provocative novel by Albert Brooks, titled 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America, pits young against old in a near future where the reality of our aging demographics creates a sharp social divide over available resources. One of the most encouraging things about Ronald Dworkin’s book is that it was published when he was 79 years old. The last wave of the baby-boom generation will reach that age in 2043 (when I would have reached 100), and as we’ve observed, aging pushes us ever so acutely toward the perspective of the hedgehog. If baby boomers can make the best use of this notion, 2030 will work out better than any novelist’s dystopia.

KINDLE Books and EBooks on Amazon:

 September University: Summoning Passion for an Unfinished Life

Existential Aspirations: Reflections of a Self-Taught Philosopher

The Rapture of Maturity: A Legacy of Lifelong Learning

Beyond the American Dream: Lifelong Learning and the Search for Meaning in

Proving You're Qualified: Strategies for Competent People Without College Degrees

Training Yourself: The 21st Century Credential

Self-University: The Price of Tuition is the Desire to Learn. Your Degree is a Better Life

Portals in a Northern Sky: A Novel

KINDLE Essays on Amazon:

Aging Existentially: Getting the Most Out of the Fall and Winter of Life

America’s Greatest Enemy: Ignorance

Atlas Begs To Differ: Why It’s a Mistake to Believe in Ayn Rand

Class Warfare: Is It Real? Is It Over? Or Has It Just Begun?

Heroism, Cowardice, and the National Tragedy of Hidden Guilt

Learning A Living: Career Success Without Formal Credentials

Nostalgia: Why the Past Matters

Pursuing Justice: Foxes, Hedgehogs, and the Baby-Boom Legacy

NOOK Books and Essays on Barnes & Noble

Portals in a Northern Sky: A Novel

Aging Existentially: Getting the Most Out of the Fall and Winter of Life

America’s Greatest Enemy: Ignorance

Atlas Begs To Differ: Why It’s a Mistake to Believe in Ayn Rand

Class Warfare: Is It Real? Is It Over? Or Has It Just Begun?

Heroism, Cowardice, and the National Tragedy of Hidden Guilt

Learning A Living: Career Success Without Formal Credentials

Nostalgia: Why the Past Matters

Pursuing Justice: Foxes, Hedgehogs, and the Baby-Boom Legacy

Websites

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September University.org Website

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An Essay by a Philosopher

Here is an essay titled "Killing the Things We Love" by John F. Schumaker, who is one of the cultural critics that I admire most on this planet. I thought you might find it of interest. Best.

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/762/1/

As always your comments are appreciated.

Charles D. Hayes