Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Our Newest Op Ed...
Is America Losing Its Faith?
- By Warner Todd Huston
Americans are losing their faith. Not their faith in God or religion, though that is slackening as well, but their faith in the essential rightness of America itself. Until recently Americans were quite sure of the basic truths upon which we are formed and the basic righteousness of those truths. Unfortunately, many of us are no longer sure of our "givenness", as Daniel Boorstin so famously termed it.
It's easy to peg the degradation of that surety to the counter culture of the 1960's, of course. The Sixties was a watershed decade for self-doubt, but the doubting began decades before, during the great age of socialist theorizing that swept the world in the early 1900's. Though seemingly immune from socialist practice and politics, we Americans none-the-less fostered reflection on such ideas in our Universities and from the realm of philosophy, history and art our educated elite accepted the concept of relative thinking -- perhaps we weren't really so good after all. By mid century, when William F. Buckley wrote his famous lament about Yale, it seemed that those educators sanguine of American exceptionalism were far and few between. It has gotten no better by the start of this new century as anyone who knows of David Horowitz's work could easily realize.
There was a time not long ago when, to European eyes, both major American political Parties seemed nearly indistinguishable one from the other. There was a reason for that, too. It was because both parties agreed that America was a righteous place differing only on the various technical means to sustain that righteousness. They agreed that our basic ideals were good and both believed that the U.S. Constitution was to be interpreted conservatively as opposed to loosely. Not only were our principles, conventions, and procedures good but they were the best ever conceived by the mind of man. Perhaps even the best that ever could be imagined...........................
Click HERE To Read On
- By Warner Todd Huston
Americans are losing their faith. Not their faith in God or religion, though that is slackening as well, but their faith in the essential rightness of America itself. Until recently Americans were quite sure of the basic truths upon which we are formed and the basic righteousness of those truths. Unfortunately, many of us are no longer sure of our "givenness", as Daniel Boorstin so famously termed it.
It's easy to peg the degradation of that surety to the counter culture of the 1960's, of course. The Sixties was a watershed decade for self-doubt, but the doubting began decades before, during the great age of socialist theorizing that swept the world in the early 1900's. Though seemingly immune from socialist practice and politics, we Americans none-the-less fostered reflection on such ideas in our Universities and from the realm of philosophy, history and art our educated elite accepted the concept of relative thinking -- perhaps we weren't really so good after all. By mid century, when William F. Buckley wrote his famous lament about Yale, it seemed that those educators sanguine of American exceptionalism were far and few between. It has gotten no better by the start of this new century as anyone who knows of David Horowitz's work could easily realize.
There was a time not long ago when, to European eyes, both major American political Parties seemed nearly indistinguishable one from the other. There was a reason for that, too. It was because both parties agreed that America was a righteous place differing only on the various technical means to sustain that righteousness. They agreed that our basic ideals were good and both believed that the U.S. Constitution was to be interpreted conservatively as opposed to loosely. Not only were our principles, conventions, and procedures good but they were the best ever conceived by the mind of man. Perhaps even the best that ever could be imagined...........................
Click HERE To Read On
# posted by Publius @ 4/25/2006 12:33:00 AM 
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