WILLIAM MARKLEY remembers an original and politically unclassifiable writer

Many of us in the USA believe that our country has lost much of the strength and virtue which it once had. We see an America that isn’t working the way it should. And we know that corruption, incompetence, and division are on the rise. I was born in 1962. For anyone my age or older, it should be clear that the nation has culturally and socially declined in our lifetimes. The roots of this decline stretch back far into the twentieth century.

In the 1990s, historian and sociologist Christopher Lasch presented a diagnosis of what had gone wrong. While he is right in many of his conclusions, and accurately describes much of what happened, I believe that he misses some of the reasons for America’s decline. But despite any shortcomings, he is well worth reading.

Lasch sadly died too young, in 1994, at the age of sixty-one. In his last book, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, which was published the year after his death, he warned that Americans in higher social positions had developed a contempt for their own nation, and for fellow citizens. These so-called “elites” isolated themselves from the rest of us, praised themselves as more enlightened “Citizens of the World,” and merged into the group that is today called the globalists. They especially despised middle- and working-class Americans.

In his introduction to Revolt of the Elites, Lasch noted several concerns that non-elite Americans had at the time, including the loss of industry and associated jobs, threats to the middle class, rising crime, and declining cities. [1] Sound familiar? It should. And remember, Lasch wrote this in 1994. America still has many good people, but the qualities that made America healthy are still under threat. We, today, could add to Lasch’s list of concerns: uncontrolled immigration, Woke, declining education, family breakdown, social disorder, institutional corruption, an upper class that is hoarding more and more of America’s wealth, and last but not least, a demoralizing war on beauty.

Since Lasch’s day, Americans have also been dissatisfied with the state of politics and government. Neither major American political party has adequately addressed our urgent problems. Lasch ascribes this to the increased isolation of American elites. This isolation has ensured that powerful people don’t suffer from the results of their many failed policies. [2] This has been a relatively recent development in American history. It’s very important for us to understand that, as a group, our elites were not always as unmoored and hostile to the rest of us as they are now. Lasch describes how the wealthy in America once commonly had a strong sense of noblesse oblige—a belief that they were responsible for acting generously, benevolently and honorably towards people in other, less fortunate classes. As a result, “Libraries, museums, parks, orchestras, universities, hospitals, and other civic amenities stood as so many monuments to upper-class munificence.” [3]

Carnegie Library in Xenia, Ohio. Industrialist Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of many public libraries in small and large cities

The new “elites,” for want of a better word, are a very different breed. They partially developed out of a system of “mobility of capital and the emergence of a global market.” This economic system arose in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The new elites also have taken advantage of a recently-developed system of educational credentials, acquired from approved schools such as the Ivy League universities. This credentialism that has become so consequential is associated with so-called Progressive ideology, which gained a foothold in America by the early twentieth century. Among the new elites, noblesse oblige has disappeared. These successors to the Henry Fords of old include business and NGO managers, media figures, government bureaucrats, the education establishment, tech leaders and workers, and others who “produce and manipulate information.” They are not nearly as closely tied to local communities and the nation as a whole as the earlier elites were. They are the “Anywheres” which David Goodhart described, as opposed to the “Somewheres” who are still conservative and rooted in a place. Lasch notes, “It is a question whether they think of themselves as Americans at all. Patriotism, certainly, does not rank very high in their hierarchy of virtues. ‘Multiculturalism,’ on the other hand, suits them to perfection.” [4] This new class has tried to change the meaning of the word “democracy” for its own benefit, and to favour certain social classes which have supposedly been treated unfairly. According to Lasch, for the new elites, democracy means a “therapeutic state” which promotes “self-esteem.” [5]

In Revolt of the Elites, Lasch expressed appreciation for the American Founding Fathers, and the civic and social life of America that flourished well into the nineteenth century. Our Civil War was a terrible rupture, of course. But although antebellum politicians obviously failed to find a peaceful resolution before that war erupted at Fort Sumter, many of them had tried diligently, using political channels that worked well in earlier decades, and would again work well after the war, until the new elites rose to domination.

Lasch carefully studied and understood the earlier, sometimes novel American ideas of democracy. He appreciated how the American republic and its democratic elements, based on the founding documents, rule of law, and separation of powers, provided ways for people of all social classes to thrive and earn respect. Nineteenth century Americans tended to have a very different understanding of American democracy than the ideologues who refer to “our democracy” today. While Federalists and Whigs warned of the dangers of the mob, those who approved of the expansion of democracy stressed the need for a cohesive society with wide, active participation, and warned of the dangers that would arise from a widening gap between the rich and the poor. They emphasized the value of a high proportion of men participating in a trade or owning and managing property, which would foster qualities necessary for a healthy democracy, such as self-reliance and responsibility:

Democracy works best when men and women do things for themselves, with the help of their friends and neighbors, instead of depending on the state. Not that democracy should be equated with rugged individualism. Self-reliance does not mean self-sufficiency. Self-governing communities, not individuals, are the basic units of democratic society. [6]

While individualism was often emphasized in America, it was balanced, from America’s beginnings, by the activities of religious and other voluntary organizations, which provided assistance to those in need, strengthened social bonds, and promoted cultural pursuits. The decline of these organizations is now attested by many empty churches, and countless other empty, crumbling buildings in small towns and cities, which once housed thriving community groups such as the Grange, the Odd Fellows, and the Lyceum.

A former Odd Fellows Hall, in rural Ohio

The role of “experts”

Along with globalized economics, Lasch assigns blame for America’s decline on the rise of “experts,” and an unquestioning trust in “science” to solve all problems. This process accelerated in the late-nineteenth century, as American intellectuals looked to Europe for new ideas. Among the results in government were a professionalized bureaucracy, which continually grew and changed in unforeseen directions, and a growing reliance on educated experts for developing policies. This new system of the American “Progressives” showed its fallibility by the 1930s, with policies that prolonged the Great Depression. “The Best and the Brightest” also showed their short-sightedness in the 1960s, with the development of the welfare state, the direction of the Vietnam War, and other policies which ruined American cities. As we saw later with Covid in 2020, and the “climate change” hysteria of the last few decades, scientists and other experts have continued to be wrong in many cases. True science knows its limits, and always encourages professional argument and rational criticism. In order to offer convincing evidence, it must show that the results of a scientific experiment can be duplicated. This is very different from today’s “scientism” delusion, which is prevalent among many persons who believe that they are well-educated. Another difference from the days before the “Progressive Era” is that, in recent years, many in the expert classes have not been anchored in the Christian, Western morality which served America so well. Traditional Christian, Western morality taught that there are limits to the understanding and capability of science and knowledge. Without this, a blinding arrogance has developed among the new elites. And Lasch emphasized that this arrogance is very different from the pride of earlier aristocrats, which was based on “the inheritance of an ancient lineage and on the obligation to defend its honor.” Knightly ideals and qualities are a thing of the past. [7]

Lasch also criticizes the ideal of a “meritocracy.” He argues that, paradoxically, this tends to encourage an upper class to become more entrenched, rather than providing truly fluid social mobility. This happens by allowing capable persons from lower classes to rise who, in the process, develop allegiance or obligation to the established upper class. And the lower classes lose effective leaders. I’m not sure that I am completely convinced by Lasch’s argument here, but it is food for thought. Lasch does provide plenty of evidence for what Charles Haywood describes, in another review of Revolt of the Elites: “Until quite recently, in fact, the American ideal was not rising up through the class structure, but succeeding within one’s own community and frame.” [8] Lasch also specified that this ideal insisted upon opportunities for full citizenship, and for participating and mixing with others in the broad society. [9]

A Young Carpenter, ca. 1850 (Chrysler Museum of Art)

The republican system which America’s founders and their adherents established provided the means for many humble people to live productive lives. It didn’t necessarily enable everyone to become a tycoon or to get rich quick, but it did offer a share of social respect to any citizen who acted responsibly. Nineteenth-century workers, farmers and craftsmen considered this kind of respect to be their due. They weren’t interested in a social revolution that would overthrow the wealthy. Compared with the rest of the world, a high proportion of working-class and middle-class persons participated in the civil aspects of the American system. Those in other classes also benefited from this system.

Lasch rightly lamented the loss of these civil aspects of America. He claims that the rise of wage labor and large corporations, along with the dwindling of more independent workers, were among the reasons for this change. There was also the growth of the new, more isolated elite classes who lacked solidarity with the less wealthy. Among the Progressives of the early twentieth century, an attitude arose that “most political questions were too complex” for the public. [10] In more recent decades, prominent politicians have denounced the supposedly benighted “deplorables” and “bitter clingers” of the middle and working classes – those who have earned responsibility and respect but are shut out from the workings of the current system, and sometimes even denied full freedoms in a system of anarcho-tyranny.

The decline of journalism and debate

From 1830 to 1900, political participation was much higher in America than today. And there was a thriving press which contributed mightily to public debates, unlike our later mainstream media. Newspapers were “fiercely partisan,” as Lasch described. Many papers tended to advocate for one political party or another. Some refused to be in the thrall of any party. Many cities and towns offered multiple papers which offered views in opposition to each other. Despite the recent development of the so-called “Information Age,” Lasch claims frankly that by the late twentieth century, voters tended to be much less well-informed than before. This was a result of a discouraging of open debate that developed, and a transformation of journalists into a more credentialed “profession.”

Throughout the nineteenth century, Americans eagerly attended political speeches and debates. These occurred frequently throughout the country, and focused on topics of local, state, and national importance. The series of Lincoln-Douglas debates was just one famous example. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas spoke very frankly compared with today’s politicians, who are surrounded by consultants and PR managers. Those earlier debates often occurred directly between the opposing politicians, without journalists intruding as intermediaries, as we usually see today. Such journalists tend to assert their own agendas into the debate, often disregarding public concerns. [11] Lasch highlighted the necessity of “sustained public debate” as a remedy for the avalanche of “junk mail” media to which we have been subjected since the late twentieth century. [12]

Let’s also remember the whining by American deep-state apologists during the past decade about what they called misinformation and disinformation. Of course false information exists, but this recent effort was a coordinated targeting of information that was truthful and did not fit the narrative of the regime. This effort was completely opposed to what Lasch called “sustained public debate.” It was a contempt for the public, exhibited by Biden administration officials and several members of the media. They actively tried to shut down free discussion online. Both major parties have been guilty of media manipulation, but the aforementioned campaign was an especially aggressive example, using government agencies to impose censorship.

This didn’t only happen in the USA. During Covid-19 in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern insisted that the only true source of information for the public would be the government. “We will continue to be your single source of truth,” she stated. And she emphasized, “Otherwise, dismiss anything else.” This was during a time when, throughout the West, we were repeatedly misled and lied to by government officials and media. During her reign, Ardern and her government inflicted a drastic lockdown on New Zealand, which included human rights violations and significant economic damage. She admitted openly that there would be “two classes of people” in the country, the vaccinated and unvaccinated. We are steadily learning how very harmful the lockdowns and other Covid policies were to our societies. As one alternative media figure put it, this was “weaponized, phony niceness.” It was also totalitarian and rooted in unreality. [13]

This leads me to a positive note. One thing has improved in my lifetime: the opening up of political discussion beyond the limits that were strictly enforced for decades by the mainstream media and their controllers. The Internet has allowed much more free discussion – a very welcome widening of the Overton Window. Elon Musk’s X has played a role in this, along with the ability for anyone – such as your humble author – to post their musings on a variety of Internet platforms. It’s a bit like a return to the wild and woolly days of nineteenth-century newspapers, although not quite. It certainly has allowed for more sources of information. Thoughtful, substantial arguments for a variety of perspectives can be found, when one ignores the vituperation, lies and vast amounts of other noise.

Race relations and cities

Revolt of the Elites offers a good, succinct summary of what went wrong with race relations in the 1960s. Lasch highlights how communities were destroyed by radical civil rights activism and related government actions. Much of this was also caused by social engineering that was pushed by the new elites. Lasch might have retained some naïveté about the civil rights movement, yet he saw through the platitudes of extreme activists who demanded equality at all costs, equality of results, and more. He specifically blames social engineering for

“a rapid deterioration of race relations….busing, affirmative action, and open housing threatened the ethnic solidarity of neighborhoods and drove lower-middle-class whites into opposition. In the face of their resistance, liberals ‘reacted with self-righteous indignation,’ in [Jim] Sleeper’s words.  Black militants encouraged racial polarization and demanded a new politics of ‘collective grievance and entitlement’…Liberals and other leftists also insisted on lowering or removing standards in schools and other institutions, claiming that standards were racist. White leftists praised black culture for having “an expressive, sexually liberated way of life free of bourgeois inhibitions.” [14]

In recent years, Christopher Caldwell has added to Lasch’s analysis by describing the harmful effects of civil rights legislation on our legal system and society in general, including its subversion of our constitution. [15] While the civil rights movement was active, many white Americans understandably wanted fairness for all, but much of what happened with civil rights was something different.

Social engineering had other dire impacts. One of the most striking signs of America’s decline is the current state of its cities, which were profoundly harmed by government policy and the influence of powerful private foundations. As suggested above, this was a set of “misguided policies intended to break up ethnic neighborhoods that allegedly [stood] in the way of racial integration.” Revolt of the Elites doesn’t mention it much, but increasing urban crime also played a large role in forcing whites to migrate to the suburbs. I can remember from my own lifetime when our cities were safer than they are today. Commentators such as Thomas Sowell have documented this decline.

There have been slums and a degree of urban crime for millennia. But American cities generally went from thriving social and cultural centers to, in many cases, places that many normal citizens try to avoid. Lasch does mention how the tax base of cities was eroded by white flight and the loss of industry, and he emphasizes the very valuable role that city neighborhoods once played in the lives of humble citizens. Much of that neighborhood cohesiveness is gone. [16] In my own city, neighborhoods that once were safe and tended to have cohesive Polish, Italian or German populations are now dangerous wastelands.

Decline of personal character

One theme which continues to run through Lasch’s book is the nature of respect and self-respect. We’ve already looked at how American workers, farmers, and craftsmen claimed the opportunity to earn a respectable place in society. This is of course related to self-respect. Lasch goes against the grain of many recent intellectuals by insisting that respect and self-respect must be earned through moral achievement and character. I’ll venture to say that almost all Americans would have agreed with Lasch about this, before modern psychological and teaching theories took effect. [17]

In his chapter, “The Abolition of Shame,” Lasch explores in detail some psychological theories of human shame, and some strategies recommended by psychologists for coping with it. Lasch reveals his concern about a very destructive development: how shamelessness has become widely predominant in our culture. [18] This growing attitude resulted from the increased influence of politicized psychiatrists and psychologists, and the declining influence of Christianity. Lasch reviews how Freudian revisionists in the 1930s began to insist that American society as a whole was in need of psychiatric treatment. With some variation, this general approach of attempting to transform our society has continued to be very influential. [19] Related to the attack by psychologists on human shame was a large push in the 1990s to promote “self-esteem.” Lasch describes how the recently deceased feminist Gloria Steinem got involved in an effort to mix liberal politics with psychotherapy. Steinem’s ideas were implemented as policy in some states. [20]

Higher education, culture, society, and trust

In a chapter on higher education, Lasch bent over backwards trying to be even-handed, in answering concerns about political correctness. He believed that the biggest problem in academia was the growing influence of corporations. That has certainly been a destructive force, eroding the traditional academic model. But while Lasch also criticized far-left ideologues who were becoming very influential in faculty departments, he underestimated the extent of the PC problem, and how pervasively it would subvert and eventually dominate higher education. Since the 1980s, far-left ideology has taken over vast swathes of college faculties and administrations throughout the country. Not only has this resulted in a widespread emphasis on leftist indoctrination of students, but it has also contributed to the lowering of academic standards, and has promoted policies such as DEI. As many other commentators have noticed, the woke tail wagged the corporate dog in many cases. Very significantly, far-left ideas that became prominent in higher education have been embraced throughout the primary and secondary educational systems, and in Human Resources departments, all across America.

Lasch also does not discuss some major influences on American culture and society in the twentieth century such as Alfred Kinsey’s books on sexual behaviour, the 1950 collaborative book The Authoritarian Personality, and Herbert Marcuse and other figures of the New Left. Lasch was very troubled by the breakdown of the traditional family, but in my opinion he did not explore this as thoroughly as he should in Revolt of the Elites – although he did explore threats to the Western nuclear family in another book, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged.

He also did not delve as much into the loss of social trust as I would have liked. America, along with other Western nations, once had a relatively high-trust society. In many places, we could leave our doors unlocked all the time. We could prop up our unlocked bicycles outside a store, while we went shopping. At a farm stand, we could deposit money in an untended box, to pay for farm produce. And parents could allow their children to play outside unsupervised, without much worry. Such elements of a high-trust society are disappearing. Much of this is a result of increased cultural diversity, which inevitably lowers trust, as the liberal social scientist Robert Putnam finally admitted. Lasch touched on some of the problems of diversity, and mentioned that the market and the welfare state tend to weaken “ties of trust,” [21] but he did not focus on this process.

Cleveland shoppers, 1940 (Ohio History Connection)

Other perspectives

Historian Claes Ryn agreed with Lasch to an extent. In a 2023 interview he said, “The most telling illustration of America’s fraught condition is the inability or refusal of our dominant, trend-setting elites to recognize and act on reality.” He also agreed that there was a major transformation of America in the twentieth century. [22] Yet, back in 1993, anticipating the populism that Lasch favored in Revolt of the Elites, Ryn offered the following warning….

“…[I]t would be a great mistake, especially in our disoriented era, to look to ‘the people’ for sources of purity and social unity. Populism is only another form of escape from the real problem, which is that Western civilization as a whole is disintegrating at the moral center. The people in general may today be less obviously corrupt than the elites in some respects, but that is not because of some natural propensity to virtue greater than that of elites. The mass is just slower to change and lags behind the more daring and creative elites. The people seem culturally conservative today only in comparison with more adventurous leaders. If the mass of common men have such sound instincts, who is digesting all those television programs, movies, records, musicals, and novels? Who is paying all those college and university faculty and electing and reelecting all those congressmen?… John Adams was more representative of early American political thought than Jefferson when he said that the people can be as tyrannical as any king.” [23]

While I agree somewhat with Lasch that “Populism is the authentic voice of democracy,” [24] Ryn expresses some important truths here. It’s undeniable that today’s masses have fallen under the spell of bread and circuses. The whole nature of “the People” has changed since the American founding. John Adams, in 1798, made another applicable remark: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” [25]

In the 1960s an American scholar, Eugene Rose, studied the decline of the West. He found that our culture, society, and politics had become ill with a deep-seated Nihilism. Having read widely in history, philosophy and religion, Rose believed that elements of this civilizational illness were unprecedented, such as the extent of religious unbelief combined with an unhealthy restlessness, which had grown to “a scale so vast as to be almost universal.” Rose found that: “Toward the end of the nineteenth century increasing numbers of quite ordinary men had begun that restless search – so much a part of our own contemporary scenes – to find a substitute for the God Who was dead in their hearts.” [26]

Rose described four stages of Nihilism that have been especially active in the West since the French Revolution. He called these stages Liberalism, Realism, Vitalism, and the Nihilism of Destruction. They have worked together in a dialectical way, opposing but also embracing each other, to propel the West further into decline and destruction. The cause of these nihilistic developments is the denial of absolute truth.

As he was examining the West’s decline, Eugene Rose found solace and personal healing in the Russian Orthodox Church, and he became a monk. He was given the title of Father Seraphim Rose, and his writings have become influential since his early death in 1982. Christopher Lasch probably would have agreed with at least some of Rose’s diagnosis. For me, Rose provides a more complete and satisfying analysis, but Lasch’s work adds a lot of very important details, specific to developments in America.

Father Seraphim Rose (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood)

I was surprised that Lasch did not cite James Burnham in Revolt of the Elites. Burnham wrote The Managerial Revolution (1941) and Suicide of the West (1964), which examined and sharply criticized America’s emerging, increasingly dominant managerial classes of the 20th century. Burnham became influential in some American intellectual circles, and his diagnoses are still frequently studied. But, we can’t have everything. Lasch gave us some important, clear insights into how the powers-that-be in America have steered us wrong.

An independent mind

My wife grew up in another country, and I have lost count of the number of times that I’ve told her, “It wasn’t always like this!” I resist looking at the past with rose-colored glasses, but it’s undeniable that we have lost a tremendous amount that was good in America. Zoomers today are often understandably shocked when viewing photographs and documentary film footage of Americans in the past. They see evidence of a safer, more cohesive society, with well-dressed people of all classes showing self-respect and respect for others. Our past wasn’t a utopia, but it offered much that was healthy and good. Lasch would understand.

Lasch leaned politically leftwards during much of his career, but in Revolt of the Elites he said many things which today’s leftists would label “far-right.” His general remedy for America was “to emphasize responsibility rather than rights,” to tame both capitalism and the welfare system, to strengthen community, and to prevent “a centralized state bureaucracy.” [27] He also urged a commitment to past and future generations, and quoted Horace Mann in this regard: “The successive generations of men, taken collectively, constitute one great commonwealth.” [28]

Earlier in his academic career, Lasch used some Marxist approaches in his thought and study. His “paleoconservative” academic friend Paul Gottfried claimed that he was devoted to “a non-mainstream form of socialism.” He had a

lifelong hatred of consumer capitalism…. His project was to find a religiously based communitarianism that could serve as an alternative to multinational capitalism. This communal identity would focus on service to one’s family and neighbors, and it would supposedly take everyone’s mind off consumption and the false idea of “Progress.” He also “personified an old-fashioned Presbyterian way of life. [29]

Lasch angered people on the Left and the Right. Pundits argue about where he really stood on the political spectrum. Anyway, as I’ve written elsewhere, you’re often not doing your job if you don’t make someone angry. Lasch was criticized for inconsistency, but I think that some of the anger directed against him was because he was good at bursting people’s bubbles. Original, independent thinkers like him aren’t completely cast in an ideological mold.

In his scholarship, Lasch studied many thinkers who are not commonly cited by either the Left or the Right today. He examined the ideas of some who were widely known during their lifetimes, such as William Henry Channing, Horace Mann, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, and Orestes Brownson. He also offered the perspectives of many others who have been less known, including Robert Rantoul, Jr., Charles Ingersoll, David Ramsay, R. H. Tawney, and Michael Young. All of them still have useful, interesting things to say to us – and I hope I’ve shown that Lasch does also.

NOTES

[1] Lasch, Christopher, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995, p.3

[2] Ibid., pp. 3-4

[3] Ibid., 4

[4] Ibid., pp. 5-6, 80

[5] Ibid., pp. 6-7

[6] Ibid., pp. 7-8

[7] Ibid., p. 39

[8] Haywood, Charles, “The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (Christopher Lasch),” Sept. 7, 2021, https://theworthyhouse.com/2021/09/07/the-revolt-of-the-elites-and-the-betrayal-of-democracy-christopher-lasch/

[9] Revolt of the Elites, p. 58

[10] Ibid., p. 167; see also the writings of Sam Francis

[11] Ibid., pp. 162, 164-65

[12] Ibid., pp. 173-74

[13] “Jacinda Ardern’s COVID response created ‘two classes of people’”, Sky News Australia, YouTube, Jan. 22, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyoJUhZLmDI

[14] Revolt of the Elites, p. 136

[15] Caldwell, Christopher, The Age of Entitlement, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020

[16] Revolt of the Elites, pp. 8-9, 98-99, 118-19

[17] Ibid., pp. 89, 105, 206-7

[18] Ibid., pp. 204

[19] Ibid., p. 207

[20] Ibid., 208-10

[21] Ibid., p. 102

[22] Ryn, Claes, in “”The Failure of Conservatism and the Road Not Taken” — A conversation with Claes Ryn,” Michael Vlahos Channel, YouTube, May 8, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JVlF6lCqxI

[23] Ryn, Claes, “Cultural Diversity and Unity,” Chronicles, June 1993 (reprinted June 7, 2018), https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/cultural-diversity-and-unity/

[24] Revolt of the Elites, p. 106

[25] Adams, John, Letter to the Officers of the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Division of the Massachusetts Militia, Oct. 11, 1798

[26] Rose, Eugene (Father Seraphim), Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1994

[27] Revolt of the Elites, p. 113

[28] Revolt of the Elites, p. 146, from Horace Mann, Annual Report of the Board of Education (Massachusetts), X, 127

[29] Gottfried, Paul, “Voices Against Progress: What I Learned from Genovese, Lasch, and Bradford,” Front Porch Republic, Aug. 11, 2009, https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/08/voices-against-progress-what-i-learned-from-genovese-lasch-and-bradford/