The Closing of the American Mind – Redux

I recently came across my underlined copy of Allan Bloom’s #1 best-seller The Closing of the American Mind. [i] When it first appeared in 1987, Bloom’s critique of American higher education[ii] touched off an energetic discussion of how citizens ought to be educated in a democratic society. Today, Bloom’s book has been largely rejected by the Left but remains alarmingly prophetic to many on the Right.

In his forward to The Closing of the American Mind, Nobel laureate Saul Bellow summarized Bloom’s thesis as follows:

“The heart of Professor Bloom’s argument is that the university, in a society ruled by public opinion, was to have been an island of intellectual freedom where all views were investigated, without restriction. Liberal democracy in its generosity had made this possible, but by consenting to play an active or ‘positive’ participatory role in society, the university has become inundated and saturated with the backflow of society’s ‘problems’.”

While attending college and law school in the 1970s, like Saul Below, I thought of myself as a liberal. At the time, I understood that to mean being an open-minded individual who wanted everyone to be treated fairly. Nowadays, being a liberal or, more precisely a progressive, means something different. Today’s liberals and progressives appear to be too busy demanding collective justice for historic wrongs to notice they have sacrificed the intellectual freedom liberals of the past fought so hard to achieve.           

Like many people, I’ve become more conservative over time.  Yet, I find myself agreeing with 72% of Americans who say, according to a recent Gallup Poll[iii], they are not happy with the direction of the country. Like all surveys which rely upon open-ended questions, that 72% figure cloaks a myriad of reasons why people currently believe America is on the wrong track.

Even though the right track percentage reached a 12-year high in May 2018[iv] (a better result than any time during President Obama’s two terms), much of the remaining negative sentiment appears to stem from the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Roughly 40% of Americans will never see our Nation’s future favorably unless someone else occupies the White House, preferably a woman and/or a person of color. Another 40% see President Trump as a welcome change from the previous four presidents who they believe were out of touch with ordinary people. The remaining 20% includes those few moderates who still exist and many who don’t pay much attention to politics. Although their opinions tend to vacillate with each news cycle, when they vote, they often determine the outcome of elections.

Currently, twenty or more Democrats and a few independents have expressed interest in challenging President Trump in November 2020.  The media have been fixated on what makes all of these candidates so different than the current occupant of the White House.  I, on the other hand, find myself more concerned about the manner in which the American people will select all future presidents.

For nearly 250 years, Americans have vigorously debated the major issues of their day. Politics have never been for the faint at heart. However, up until a few decades ago, the public relied upon a more or less common body of information and interpreted available facts using roughly the same analytical principles. That has fundamentally changed. As electronic media have replaced traditional sources of information, such as schools, families, churches, and a relatively neutral press, our personal opinions have increasingly become shaped by the informational bias of the news sources we rely upon. 

Why has this happened?  I see four primary reasons for the closing of our political minds.

First, as Bloom pointed out in his book, the systemic failure of both public and private educational institutions to teach the legal principles and traditions of our society has resulted in widespread ignorance and indifference among a high percentage of people. Virtually all of our educational systems have been revamped in favor of progressive goals. This came at the expense of teaching core skills, such as the acquisition of pertinent and reliable information, the ability to analyze and communicate one’s findings, and the ability to reach independent conclusions. Recently, this intellectual deficit became alarmingly clear to me when I began auditing undergraduate courses at a major public university. I was saddened to see how little today’s college students really know about the world and how much difficulty they have expressing themselves.

Secondly, outside of our schools, the major conduits of public information have been overtaken by commercialism and sensationalism. What once was only seen in Super Bowl commercials and supermarket tabloids is now accepted as a perfectly normal way to communicate. In an era of emoticons and memes, it’s rare to find complex issues being addressed in complete sentences and thoughtfully written paragraphs. When it seems impossible to hold the attention of a reader or listener more than 30 seconds, should it be any surprise that more and more people rely on click bait and fake news to form their opinions?

Thirdly, and most importantly, is the pervasive silencing of dissent, evidenced by a steady erosion of our First Amendment rights. Most alarming is how rapidly this paralysis has extended beyond political speech to almost every form of social discourse. In an obsessive effort to avoid offending those who are most easily offended, we have lost the freedom to express ourselves candidly and honestly. Rational thought and common sense have taken a back seat to the eradication of what some consider hate speech. Not satisfied with simply banning blatantly offensive speech, the Orwellian thought police now seek to pummel anyone who inadvertently suggests what many have been thinking. This is ominous. Any society that loses a robust marketplace of ideas will inevitably fall victim to intellectual atrophy if not totalitarianism.

The final nail in the coffin of American society is the growing corruption of our system of justice. Adherence to the rule of law, universally seen as a key measure of a country’s development and stability, is critical to any society’s ability to solve problems. It matters not whether the country is capitalistic or socialistic, or whether it is based on Western values or something else.  When the rule of law decays – most often exhibited by the unequal application of whatever rules do exist – then people living under that law have no reason to respect it or adhere to its precepts. When some privileged people are allowed to skate free while others are subjected to abuses of prosecutorial power, average folks begin to lose trust in a system that requires them to report their annual income to the IRS, to stop at traffic lights when no one else is in the intersection, or to tell the truth. 

As history shows, more great civilizations have collapsed due to public ignorance and apathy than because of a failure of leadership. It’s bad enough when you can’t trust your leaders to tell you the truth. It’s much worse when you can no longer believe your family, friends, co-workers and neighbors because they have closed their minds and are no longer able to think for themselves.

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[i] https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Closing-of-the-American-Mind/Allan-Bloom/9781451683202

[ii] In brief, Bloom concluded that that colleges and universities had abandoned teaching classical subjects in favor of ones that were considered politically expedient.

[iii] https://news.gallup.com/poll/1669/General-Mood-Country.aspx

[iv] https://news.gallup.com/poll/235739/satisfaction-direction-reaches-year-high.aspx