English Only
A study by the U.S. Dept. of Education reveals continuing decline in the number of students pursuing studies in foreign languages. The argument about where such a rejection may lead is framed in very accessible language through metaphor:
“without acquiring another language, which few Americans do, learning about Africa through Kwanzaa is like learning about Germany through Oktoberfest.”
The Machinery of Revolution
An argument is forwarded that television changed forever the way Americans related to the previously existing Euro-centric perspective. Far from being a passive medium capable of turning viewers into unthinking dullards, television unleashed a revolution which spread even to academia itself:
“At some mysterious point in the 1950s, television ceased to be just an odd-looking gizmo . . . and entered the bloodstream. It became us. It is who we are.”
Pop Culture
Still referring to the influx of everyday entertainment as pop culture? That’s because it is not a cultural influence defined by entertainment at all and its representative product is itself barely even worthy of monographs published in obscure journals:
"It is sometimes called Popular Culture, but I think Mass Culture a more accurate term, since its distinctive mark is that it is solely and directly an article of mass consumption, like chewing gum."
Dreamland
The problem with issuing an urge for revolution to produce a utopian ideal is that so far it has only remain an idealistic concept. The logic may not necessarily follow in reality, but the proverbial common sense is difficult to overcome:
"An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.”
The Only Real Freedom is…
The abstract concept of freedom is the guiding light of American society, but ultimately it remains merely an abstraction. What does freedom bring when attained? The answer, of course, is choice, and it is precisely at the level of choice where the consequences of being free are situated:
"Freedom, like Industry, is a very good horse to ride;—but to ride somewhere. You seem to think that you have only got to get on the back of your horse Freedom, or your horse Industry, and to ride away as hard as you can, to be sure of coming to the right destination."
