Summary

Key Quotes

Democracy works best when property is distributed as widely as possible among the citizens

Democracy is more likely to die due to indifference than to intolerance

Everything, therefore, depends on closing the gap between the elites and the rest of the nation

Argument is the essence of education

The elites have revolted — not the masses. The new globalist class of symbolic analysts (abstraction, systems thinking, experimentation, collaboration) has seceded from civic life, abandoned national loyalty, and replaced noblesse oblige with radical ingratitude. Meritocracy plucks the gifted from the lower class and appropriates them, hollowing out the middle while magnifying inequality through assortative mating. Democracy works best when property is widely distributed, but the closing of the frontier, concentration of corporate power, and professionalization of knowledge have made citizenship a spectator sport. Religion has been replaced by identity politics with the same dogmatic certainty. The central challenge: democracy is more likely to die from indifference than intolerance, and everything depends on closing the gap between elites and everyone else.

Key Takeaways

Notes

1: Introduction

• Wealth used to come with civic obligations (eg. philanthropy)
• Globalist “new elites”
• “Democracy works best when property is distributed as widely as possible among the citizens”
• Degeneration of public spaces + debate
• Knowledge is power (the left controlling “transcendent truth”)
• Splitting of wisdom and action
• Nihilistic world view
• Religion is a double edged sword
• Religion → identity politics (replaced)
  • Dogmatic belief in truth
• Decline of civic equality
  • Erosion of public institutions in which citizens meet as equals
• Elites escape from reality
• Central dogma of post-modernist thought: social construction of reality
• Need to set limits on “the imperialism of the market” (what money can and can’t buy)

2: The intensification of social divisions

• Elites have lost faith in the values of the West
• The masses have lost interest in revolution
• Megacities → collapse of civic life
• Middle class hollowed out (Gini)
• Assortative mating → magnified inequality
• Globalism > nationalism
• Privileged communities (eg. Cambridge, Silicon Valley
• “Symbolic analysts”
  • Abstraction, system thinking, experimentation, collaboration
• Radical ingratitude, future of infinite possibility
• Hereditary → meritocracy
  • Plucks the gifted out of the lower class who could make a difference and appropriates them

3: Social mobility

• “Social mobility” is a recent term
• Failure to critique the system
  • Self help, individualism
• Labor theory of value
• Labor vs learned + leisure class
• Closing of the frontier in 1890 → forced to reckon with proletarian of labor
• Social mobility of education
  • Recruitment and cycling of elites
• Mobility hasn’t gone down, but it’s become more stratified
• Problems:
  • Concentration of corporate power
  • Decline of small-scale production
  • Separation of production from consumption
  • Growth of the welfare state
  • Professionalization of knowledge
  • Erosion of competence, responsibility, and citizenship

4: Does democracy deserve to survive?

• Permanent wage-earning class initially (rightfully?) seen as an abomination
• How could responsibility thrive in a world dominated by giant orgs and mass communications?
• Democracy: equal access to the means of competence
• Ideological fanaticism
• New racism is reactionary against unfair double standards

5: Communitarianism / populism

• ↑ ethic of compassion + ethic of respect
• Enlightenment thinking failed
• Globalism: anticipated feelings of sameness → amplified differences
• Invasion of family by the market: women joining labor force
• Capitalism remodels every institution in its own image
• Neighborhoods encourage “casual public trust”
• Communitarianism + populism oppose both free market ideology (right) and welfare state (left)
• Need a third party who places moral obligation in common sense, ordinary emotions, and everyday life - not market or state
• Populism > communitarianism: respect for others, not welfare state
• “Democracy is more likely to die due to indifference than to intolerance”
  • Need to have high standards
• Competing ideologies of elite-dominated parties creates false impression of polarization
• “Everything, therefore, depends on closing the gap between the elites and the rest of the nation”

2: Democratic discourse in decline

6: Conversation in the civic arts

• Fewer institutions where elites and normal people can discuss on equal grounds
• Third spaces collapse
• ↑ essential for civic life
• Third places prize decency > achievement
• The market preempts public spaces

7: Racial politics in NYC

• Anticipating CRT, affirmative action pushback
• Need to emphasize class > race

8: The common schools

• Common sentiment that school system went wrong in 1950s-1980s
• Mann created the US education system
• Need more unsupervised play
• Mann distrusted political activity rather than seeing it as essential to civic function
• Legal system vs taking into own hands, voting to change laws (also rebellion?)
• Moral education: inoculation against social vices and crimes
  • Republican tradition of virtue: honor, ardor, superabundant energy, the fullest use of one’s powers
• No religion in schools except “the religion common to all”: “much taught in general, but nothing in particular”
• Mann’s assumption that eduction only happens in schools, while others argue that most happens outside of the formal setting
• ^ mistakes, misconceptions

9: The lost art of argument

• Arguments lead to directed information gathering (naturally undirected)
• Civic engagement down (80% → 60%)
• Lincoln Douglas vs modern media-driven debates (imposes conformity)
  • Need a candidate to buck the trend → authentic (ended up being Trump)
  • Challenge media as arbiters of public discussion
• Professionalization of politics
• Must have to defend opinions in public
• “Argument is the essence of education”
• Democracy as the most educational system by “extending the circle of debate as widely as possible”
• Local communities are the heart: where ideas can be debated

10: Academic pseudo-radicalism

• The charade of subversion
• Education is increasingly for the elites only
• Cultural pluralism
• Race, gender, class overemphasis in edu
• Culture must be dumbed down in order to democratize
• Postmodernism
• Corporate control:
  • Humanities → science, tech research
  • Destroyed social studies (obsession with quantification)
  • Top-heavy administration

3: The dark night of the soul

11: The abolition of shame

• Shame = absence of self esteem
• Quality of humanities work is going down
• Shame prevents us from taking ourselves too seriously
• Self-respect has to be earned
• Self-esteem massively overemphasized
• Cult of the victim
• Professionalization of compassion
  • Loss of candor
• Psychoanalysis veering towards religion

12: The religion of culture

• “The criminal class”
• Elites hostility towards religion
• Sin (religion) → sickness (secular)
• Academics don’t want to teach in public forums, engage in debate
• Aggressive marketing of ideas
• Cannot lean on psychology with the same faith as religion

13: The soul of man under secularism

• Postmodernism
• Freedom, self-dependence
• Idea that enlightened critical thinking is an info-hazard, cannot return to pre-modern, simplistic delusions / systems of thought
• ↑ false
• Rebellion against dependence