Word: vierecks
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...Poet Viereck first noticed how common the new Babbittry had become when he returned to teach history at Harvard after World War II. "Philistinism," he realized, "had acquired a new content, a new set of conditioned reflexes. It was still mongering clichés, but the clichés had changed . . . The main activity of the new-style Philistine has become the facile game of philistine-baiting...
Whistler v. Picasso. "Perhaps," says Viereck, "every 20 years, the eternal Babbitt dons a new name and a new mask." Old George Babbitt would speak smugly of "boosting and flag-waving and hating slackers and reds, and hating such longhair stuff as culture." Young Gaylord just as smugly pretends to revel in art and culture, thinks "nothing more wonderful than defying middle-class conventions." And his wife "can't stand those barbaric middle-class businessmen...
Indeed, says Poet Viereck, "the essence of all Babbittry, senior or junior, is stereotypes . . . You can always spot [the new Babbitt] by the phrases he uses, by his enlightened, forward-looking attitude toward everything, in life or art or politics; and even more by his awareness of how enlightened and forward-looking he is and by the satisfaction that such awareness gives him . . ." But "nobody laughs at Babbitt Junior's ideas. That's because they're always so liberal and avant-garde...
...Plus Two. "The resulting situation is not funny," says Viereck. "It is a serious, perhaps tragic, problem. Society is in a bad way when people say two and two are five because it sounds more daring than to say two and two are four. Society is in a bad way when too many people reject every ancient truth and tradition in ethics and politics and art because thereby they can show off better at cocktail parties. Civilization is an infinitely fragile bundle of accumulated habits and restraints. The necessary conservative function of any generation is not just to enjoy itself...
...Poet Viereck thinks that U.S. educators can best discharge their responsibilities to future generations by swinging away from "the short-sighted cult of utilitarian studies" and back towards the humanities with their "reverence for integrity, not because it's fashionable but because it's true." Such a reverence "would work a moral revolution deeper and more helpful than all the shallow artistic and political and economic revolts of our panting apostles of progress. It would be a moral revolution against that inner smirk which prefers cleverness to wisdom...