A few years back, a small college near where I live held a gathering devoted to, basically, saving Western Civilization. Being largely oblivious to the very existence of such a thing as "Western Civilization" (though, like Gandhi, I think it would be a good idea), let alone the threats to this no-doubt blissful state, I decided to attend the conference.
I should've known better. The program was essentially LITTLE more than a show funded by a local right-wing business man who makes Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt look cosmopolitan. Talks by two well-known Major League conservatives (Hilton Kramer and Dinesh D'Souza) framed a host of papers read by Minor Leaguers who toil away at small private colleges and regional state universities1-- some of whom seem to have had a cup of coffee at the Show (in the form of a residency at the Heritage Foundation or The Hoover Institute), but who, for the most part, they haven't struck it rich by playing their game.
Anyway, I should've known I wasn't in the right frame of mind for the proceedings. While having a cup of coffee in the student union right before Hilton Kramer's opening lecture, I looked out and saw a delivery truck being unloaded. I must've really needed that coffee because I could've sworn, for a few seconds, that the truck said "TURNER DIARY FARMS." My momentary dyslexia passed, however, and I saw it was actually a dairy truck, bringing the day's supply of milk and cheese to the dining facilities. With my orderly perceptions restored, I went to the auditorium and assumed my seat among about 30 or 40 people, the majority of whom were Young Republicans and ideologically-oriented MBA students from area colleges and universities, with a handful of professors and other adults.
Batting lead off, Kramer delivered a hastily-composed, poorly conceived talk designed primarily to enhance the self-esteem of his wealthy benefactors and their fans. Entitled "Institutionalizing the Counter Culture" (pun unintentional, given the content of his talk), Kramer's thesis was highly predictable. Basically, our civilization is in decline, rotting from within, and naturally, blame must fall on the 1960s. Soon after his opening line, I made a bet with myself that, within five minutes, he would quote Matthew Arnold. He had to. It is impossible for the American right to talk about civilization in decline and the dastardly effects of the 1960s without somehow invoking Arnold.
Sure enough, less than 5 minutes in, he trotted out the old chestnut about "culture being the pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know on all matters which most concern us the best which has been thought and said in the world . . ."2 Of course, if the conventions of Full Disclosure were in effect, Kramer would've been required to add ". . . by people who dress and talk like we do," but flattering those in power means never having to tell the whole truth.
Now, personally, I've always thought that Arnold's was a perfectly serviceable definition of culture, assuming one wasn't a fundamentalist about it. And it was obvious that Kramer was fond of it, too. But alas, according to Kramer, "we certainly do not reserve the word culture for what Matthew Arnold had in mind in his famous formulation" (2). Why not? Well, one reason a person might think so is because different conceptions of the word "culture" emerged in the 20th Century. At the very least, one has to acknowledge the interventions of anthropologists, who'd been challenging ethnocentric habits of thought ever since Arnold, or any number of the countless other forces that have been in play in the century-and-more since Arnold formulated his definition in Culture and Anarchy. But if you're the sort of person who attends conferences about Civilization with a capital "C", you're more likely to think that the reason has a lot more to do with "the election of Bill Clinton," which "has given the nation its first countercultural president and First Lady" (3). Not to mention that favorite bugaboo, of the American Right, the 1960s.
Next page: Time/Life does the 60's
