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posted by martyb on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the No-Way! dept.

What was it that one learned through a great books curriculum? Certainly not "conservatism" in any contemporary American sense of the term. We were not taught to become American patriots, or religious pietists, or to worship what Rudyard Kipling called "the Gods of the Market Place." We were not instructed in the evils of Marxism, or the glories of capitalism, or even the superiority of Western civilization.

As I think about it, I'm not sure we were taught anything at all. What we did was read books that raised serious questions about the human condition, and which invited us to attempt to ask serious questions of our own. Education, in this sense, wasn't a "teaching" with any fixed lesson. It was an exercise in interrogation.

To listen and understand; to question and disagree; to treat no proposition as sacred and no objection as impious; to be willing to entertain unpopular ideas and cultivate the habits of an open mind — this is what I was encouraged to do by my teachers at the University of Chicago.

It's what used to be called a liberal education.

The University of Chicago showed us something else: that every great idea is really just a spectacular disagreement with some other great idea.

Bret Stephens's speech warrants a full read. It makes valuable points that we all need to hear, even on SN.


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  • (Score: 3, Disagree) by choose another one on Wednesday September 27 2017, @04:16PM (2 children)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 27 2017, @04:16PM (#573858)

    We certainly know the enemy, we've met them... and they are us.

    NO they are not, they are them, they are nothing like us, they are wrong, totalitarian, immoral, warmongers, evil, in fact everything we are not.

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  • (Score: 3, Disagree) by c0lo on Wednesday September 27 2017, @04:27PM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 27 2017, @04:27PM (#573863) Journal

    You like trespassing into Poe's jurisdiction or what?

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:56PM (#574081)

      Poets have no jurisdiction, and story tellers are weak liberal arts failures!