A Texan on Culture

A cultivated mind is the Guardian Genius of Democracy.
-Mirabeau B. Lamar

It is interesting to note that J. Frank Dobie gave this quote (unattributed) in A Texan in England when comparing the recreational activities provided by American forces (Red Cross Huts) and English forces (lecture series)(210).

Walker Percy

Culturally speaking, our posture is something like the cat in the cartoon who ran off the cliff and found himself standing up in the air. Maybe he can get back to earth by backing up: on the other hand, he might be in for a radical change of perspective.
-"The Culture Critics" in Signposts in a Strange Land (270)

Cultural Literacy

Many Americans who have graduated from high school in the recent past have been deprived of the cultural vocabulary that was commonly possessed by educated persons in past generations. Some repair work is necessary for them and the members of the current school generation. They must be reintroduced to the cultural vocabulary that continues to be the foundation for literate national communication. The new illiteracy is sometimes excused by the argument that our schools are now educating larger proportions of our population. The point is that we are not educating them. We undertook the great task of universal education precisely in order to produce a truly literate population, but we have not succeeded in that task in recent years. We must assure that new generations will continue to be enfranchised in our medium of national communication as securely as they are enfranchised at the polls.
-E. D. Hirsch. Cultural Literacy. (107-108)

Religion and Culture

Having finished Philip Lee's Against the Protestant Gnostics, I decided to read Harold Bloom's The American Religion for a different take on the same subject. I will leave my critique of Bloom's work to another time. But the two books have prodded me into thinking of the relationship between Religion and Culture. More specifically, is a particular style or form of worship part and parcel of an appreciation of certain art forms? For example, if your church has a choir that sings works by Bach and Mozart, are you more likely to listen to their secular works?

Another View on the Continuing Crisis

We should recognize that this habit of calling upon the state, to take charge of matters that were once the concern of individual initiative and private charity, is the surest sign that the inner liberty shown in responsible choice is disappearing from our society. Its disappearance is both the cause of liberal policies and the natural effect of them. People are less and less inclined to take responsibility for their lives. to commit themselves to others, or to social networks...what they can summon the state to solve instead....The state comes with an agenda: it is less interested in freeing people than in equalizing them. -Roger Scruton. Liberty and Civilization: The Western Heritage. (pp. 159-160) So-called "Social Conservatives" would do well to read this and consider its ramifications. Quite often they are just as guilty as progressives of the idea that all you need to correct a problem is to pass a law. But passing a law alone will not change peoples hearts and minds. If their is a "Values Revolution" it must occur in the heart before it can truly take effect.