Word: krutch
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...VOICE OF THE DESERT (223 pp.)-Joseph Wood Krutch-William Sloane Associates...
Professor Joseph Wood Krutch has outlined one of the main causes of our moral, spiritual and cultural deterioration [TIME, Jan. 19]. The Common Man is becoming all too "common" in both senses of the word. If education does not return to its basic function of "leading out" the Uncommon Man from the mass of anonymous mediocrity, we shall soon be complaining with Ortega y Gasset of the ausenda de los mejores [literally, the absence of the better ones...
Professor Krutch's jeremiad concerning the problem of epistemology facing our age can be stated more succinctly and bluntly as follows...
Your Joseph Wood Krutch item anent the Common Man recalled a good anecdote . . . Back when Henry Wallace, as a vice presidential candidate, was exalting the Common Man, Booth Tarkington . . . commented that the phrase would mean a lot of votes, but the advantage could be more than offset if only someone could prevail on Mr. Wallace to also come out as champion of the Common Woman...
...When we make ourselves the champion of any particular group," says Krutch, "we almost inevitably begin to idealize that group. From defending the common man we pass on to exalting him, and we find ourselves beginning to imply, not merely that he is as good as anybody else, but that he is actually better. Instead of demanding only that the common man be given an opportunity to become as uncommon as possible, we make his commonness a virtue...