I may have mentioned that I've been making my way through Allan Bloom's 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind. The book is subtitled How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students. I graduated university in 1986, so Bloom was essentially talking directly to people like me and my generation. Another reason I was attracted to the book at this time relates to the recent spate of anti-Semitism and moral confusion expressed on college campuses. I have the sense that Bloom's observations made almost 40 years ago have not only not been heeded, but maybe worse, have accelerated in the impoverishment of American morals and exacerbated America's political undoing.
First, an anecdote to illustrate how I'd been infected with the virus Bloom was diagnosing in his book. After graduating McGill in 1986 with a BA degree in political science I attended a school called Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationale (IUHEI) in Geneva, Switzerland to obtain a graduate diploma in History and International Politics (like an MA). One of my teachers in a seminar course I took called 'The International Political System' was a fellow named Leon Gordenker, whose regular gig was as a senior Professor of Political Science at Princeton. The seminar surveyed the institutions created during the post-WW2 period designed to promote international peace and cooperation mainly through the United Nations. During the very first seminar professor Gordenker had us go around the table introducing ourselves, saying what country we came from, and naming the university we had graduated from (there were 300 post-graduate students at IUHEI from 70 different countries). Then he initiated a general discussion about international peace and cooperation in theory and practice. These were smart, well-educated young people, mostly from Ivy League American and elite European universities, you'd think they'd have something to say on the topic. I recall a lot of dumb silence. It's true Gordenker was an intimidating figure. A stately, gray-haired man with an athletic-build, piercing blues eyes and an air of steely seriousness. His reputation preceded him as a world renowned expert in his field who had served as an advisor to multiple US Presidents. No one risked offering an uninformed opinion for fear of being permanently marked by Gordenker as an ignorant fool. Rotchin to the rescue - because for some reason I have always found extended silences agonizingly painful.
The question Gordenker had posed to us was about whether or not the international system as we understood it had successfully promoted 'peace, security and cooperation'. I piped up. "Well it depends on what you mean by 'cooperation'." Everyone looked dumbfounded at the Canadian foolish enough to speak. "How so," responded the respected professor, advisor to world leaders, with a doubtful smile. Rotchin, being his most clever, answered with a question, "Well, isn't war a form of cooperation?" I could sense how the silence in the room had instantly thickened with collective puzzlement, as if I had uttered a Buddhist koan in a room full of bankers. Gordenker glared at me, his smile getting wider. It was clear he saw me as an unprotected target. He took aim and fired. "Well aren't you a relativist.” He may as well have labeled me a warmongering crypto-fascist. I think I heard chuckles, but I'm not sure, because I was preoccupied with the wave of heat that suddenly swept over my entire body and formed fat beads of sweat on my forehead. "Totally," I muttered, not knowing what else to say, adding to my public humiliation. More nervous chuckles from the group. I sunk into my seat, hoping to somehow magically disappear from view. From that moment on I knew I'd be marked by the other students, and even worse by Gordenker, as an idiot. I had embarrassed my university and my country on the international stage. It felt that way anyway.
It turns out that I was a proud exponent of the corrosive relativism described in Bloom's book. Until Gordenker skewered me with his rapier retort that day, I hadn't the slightest clue I'd been shaped into a gelatinous relativist by my education, it had been so deeply and completely ingrained. The Gordenker moment stays with me, even today, and the feeling that I needed desperately to grow up and get a spine. And not just me but the whole world needs to get a spine, by which I mean acknowledge that there are enduring truths and moral standards that we must hold in the highest esteem and aspire toward.
Bloom's book is not an easy read, so it's remarkable that it was a bestseller at the time. Maybe readers back then had an idea there was something amiss. The book is an odd admixture of memoir, pop-sociology and psychology, and heavy-duty political philosophy. Mostly it's a critique of university education and contemporary American values-based culture. Too often Bloom wants to demonstrate his erudition and his ability as a prose stylist, which sometimes obscures his point rather than clarifies it. Still, it's worth the effort. There are plenty of lines that I've underlined for repeated reading and reference, and of course, there’s the overall message of the book - that we suffer from an untreated sclerotic disease of moral relativism which has atrophied in the culture and body politic to the point of intolerance - that's profoundly prescient today.
Bloom has a dislike for 'rights' based politics, culture and language. He talks about how our claim of rights is thrown around and abused so loosely - we have 'rights' to everything under the sun - and this serves to show how meaningless the idea has become, endemic of nihilism, intellectual laziness and a lack of standards. Related to this, about two thirds of the way through the book, Bloom makes an intriguing distinction between 'Freedom of Speech' and 'Freedom of Expression', terminology used interchangeably. He notes that young people tend to talk more about freedom of expression than freedom of speech, and he believes this preference relates to a certain distinction between expression and speech. Expression is a broader term. It is associated with the arts, everything from painting to dance, because one expresses feelings, while speech is more meant to convey thought and ideas. We all naturally have feelings, so expression is more democratic and egalitarian. Speech, by contrast, requires consideration and forethought, and in this sense has to reach certain standards of coherence. This distinction between expression and speech resonated with me, perhaps in ways Bloom hadn't necessarily considered, but I think is consistent with his meaning, and especially as it relates to public discourse nowadays. The ascendency of expression rights, the notion that our value as human beings principally rests on the way we feel about things and the rights those feelings confer, rather than on thought and the pursuit of reasoned truth, is why, I believe, universities have developed into crucibles of moral confusion, intolerance and anti-Semitism, that was manifest on campus this year.
And not only do we see it manifest in the universities, but it also permeates our public political discourse. Former Republican arch political strategist Rick Wilson has said that if the Democrats want to win elections they have to realize that voters don't actually give a damn about policy. All they really care about is how the candidate makes them feel. Nobody knew Obama. He had virtually no political record when he appeared on the national scene seemingly out of nowhere. But nobody cared, because when he spoke he made them feel hopeful and optimistic. They voted for him without any coherent idea of how he'd govern. The same goes for Trump. They might have known who he was from television, but the fact that he had no political experience whatsoever had no impact on his electability. In fact it turned out to be an advantage. All that mattered was how Trump made them feel, aggrieved and angry. Now Kamala seems to have learned the language of political expression. She's heeding Rick's sage advice, and hardly ever talks about policy. Kamala and her new Vice-Presidential running mate Tim Walz are appealing to a sense joy and optimism in the electorate, like Obama did. I think Bloom would understand our current politics as the outcome of narrowing American minds - he uses the word 'soul' but doesn't mean it in a religious sense, rather as that aspect and spirit in human nature that is ahistorical and enduring. The more the soul shrinks the larger our whims and feelings loom. Bloom would understand the tribalism and the attraction to populist demagogues and the cult of personality in our politics as symptoms of the disease he was diagnosing in his book. Bloom's prescription to reverse the ravages of our illness of chronic moral relativism is education in the humanities and the classics. One thing we know for sure is that isn't happening any time soon.
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