has not made Rod Dreher fonder of the world as he finds it. In “The Benedict Option”, published three years ago, the veteran commentator on religious affairs lamented that conservatives like him had been utterly vanquished in America’s culture wars. The moral gap between liberals and traditionalists had become unbridgeable, he argued; the only hope for the godly lay in abandoning the fight for power and withdrawing from the social mainstream into self-contained families and communities.
Visiting Russia, Mr Dreher learns how honest Soviet citizens tried to avoid having much to do with the system. Geology was a popular discipline among scientists, as it let researchers spend a good portion of their lives in far-flung and unsullied places. Mr Dreher also speaks to people who lived through communism and know modern America.
Anthony Barnett, an English writer on democracy, observes a mood of retreat among older, left-leaning people in England and America: some over 50 are, he says, withdrawing from active politics into un-ideological passions such as gardening. The impulse, he thinks, derives less from fatalism than from an awareness that the job of fixing a broken system properly belongs to a younger, untarnished generation. The older cohort “know they were part of the problem”.
More recently some of the Frankfurt School of German thinkers, such as Theodor Adorno, took refuge from Nazism in the United States; but their critique of modern society and populist culture, for all its cerebral opacity, was meant for active use, not just idle observation. Their ideas probably helped shape post-war German culture and immunise it against fresh totalitarian temptation.
Lord, bless me with the good fortune to indulge in the esoteric pursuits of The Economist's editorial board.
I think people have a responsibility to follow through with whatever conversation they start. I like to think, 'What would Kant do?' Before engaging with moral stuff online.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: Mirror Celeb - 🏆 476. / 51 Read more »
Source: Mirror Celeb - 🏆 476. / 51 Read more »
Source: Forbes - 🏆 394. / 53 Read more »
Source: Cosmopolitan - 🏆 725. / 51 Read more »
Source: RollingStone - 🏆 483. / 51 Read more »
Source: StyleCaster - 🏆 104. / 63 Read more »