Modern Age - Summer 2016 - 9

POLITICS AND CULTURE

In varying ways, the literature that both shaped and expresses
the culture of the United States and Western civilization, of which
our country is one of the more remarkable developments, is suffering either neglect or outright hostility at the hands of those
charged with preserving and expounding it. Literature is but one
element of a people's self-understanding and cultural identity,
but its slide into oblivion exemplifies the indifference and malice
visited upon so many of the institutions that give our nation its
distinctive form and social unity. It is our imaginative vision and
mores that make us more than a loosely organized crowd of selfinterested individuals who, "getting and spending . . . lay waste
our powers."
Anthony Esolen's "Exercises in Unreality" takes a look at the
attempts to undermine the Western civilization curriculum at his
own college and shows that attacks on the culture of the West
are in essence an effort to escape from reality. A healthy human
culture is founded on an awareness of the basic elements of
human nature. The current project of dismantling our civilization
and putting the random pieces back together according to the
prevailing whims and lusts of the moment posit the construction
of a realm of self-indulgent fancy; what destroys human culture
ultimately perverts human nature itself.
My review essay, which deals with two books undertaking to
analyze our current malaise, offers a similar assessment, although
without Professor Esolen's passionate eloquence. It is imperative
that conservatives recognize that we are no longer dealing with
liberals in any rational sense of the term; we are, rather, confronted
by relentless progressive ideologues, whose ironclad ideology
occludes any consideration of contrary arguments or contradictory information. As Professor Esolen demonstrates, they have
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Modern Age - Summer 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Summer 2016

Contents
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