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53 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Worthy but incomplete, July 19, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: In Defense of Elitism (Paperback)
The best thing about "In Defense of Elitism" is its bluntness and mostly unapologetic tone (I don't know why Henry feels compelled to trot out his liberal credentials). The greatest flaw of the book is that Henry sorely overlooks a glaring irony: most of the tenets of cultural illiberalism and "identity politics" that he rightly assails were formulated and propagated by the elite. What Henry is really attacking is not egalitarianism but a self-insulated elite that panders to a misguided notion of egalitarianism. It is not the "elite" but the majority of middle-class America that has held most steadfastly to the individualist ethos that Henry praises, and it is only now that the "elite" is beginning to "rediscover" values that they have long dismissed as products of the sexist, racist, ignorant, and philistine masses. Interestingly, Henry has something in common with the liberal "elite" he despises, which is a contempt for the middle-class aesthetic. He reveals this in the seventh chapter, easily the worst of the book. He includes both sensationalistic news coverage and family photo albums in his indictment of our culture of celebrity (often appropriately called "star-f***ing") without distinguishing between the pernicious and the harmless. His tirade against karaoke is just plain weird--does he object to having fun? Perhaps Henry's book should have been titled "In Defense of Merit" instead. His main thesis seems to be that people should look up to the successful and seek to emulate them, not destroy them, and that the aristocracy of talent has an obligation to encourage our better angels. Unfortunately, this laudable reassertion of the individualist/meritocratic ethos is clouded by an authoritarian impulse that is more in line with the traditional notion of nobility rather than a society based on objective rewards and punishments. The problem of elitism is that all too often people appoint themselves as elites and then seek to impose their will on the rest of society like some Niezstchean superman. If you truly believe that you have ideas and values that are superior, the best way to enforce these ideas and values in a manner consistent with a (classical) liberal society is to SET AN EXAMPLE. Instead of sitting back and whining about how the masses are "uncultured" or turning yourself into a social hermit, get out there and DO SOMETHING about it. If your ideas and values are truly the best, the great filtering process of time will serve you and people will come to you. Henry never provides a call to action in a clear and forceful way, and by this failing his book merely adds to the cacophony of complaint.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A call-to-arms if there ever was one........, November 5, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: In Defense of Elitism (Paperback)
In two sittings, I became familiar with one of the least appreciated and most forthright books of the decade. I do hope it is one day revisited, for William Henry has written what can only be described as a blistering attack on the self-righteousness and intellectual bankruptcy of the contemporary American scene. Inflicting his venomous attacks on both the Left and Right, Henry demonstrates that what threatens America is not a lack of "morality," but rather an unhealthy obsession with mediocrity. He sees Americans for the fat, complacent, utterly jaded people that they are; childishly cynical, self-promoting, and appallingly ignorant of anything even remotely resembling enlightened thought. Henry rightly indicts our leanings toward softness and the elevation of a "bottom up" philosophy; a process which uses a perverted populism to attack achievement, distinction, and the very idea of quality. Postmodernism certainly leads the pack in terms of blame for this mess, but there are enough failing grades to go around.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Defense for the Defiant, May 25, 2000
This review is from: In Defense of Elitism (Paperback)
Henry pursuasively demythologizes the sacred creed of the American Left. By setting his sights on affirmative action, Afrocentrism, multiculturalism, and other ideological myths, and examining them from a liberal's perspective--he calls himself a "card-carrying" member of the ACLU, among other things--Henry faces correctness with power and wit. Short on scholarly citation, but long on anecdotal insights, it is a challenging, even encouraging, book to those of us who defy the mediocre uniformity of Liberal America's education, politics and art. It is a call to defy crudeness, ignorance, and the perpetuation of lies and mythologies that trap people in the culture of dependance. The greatness of America was the promise of rewarding the spirit of excellence. In many ways, this is what Henry demands from us. This book will become suggested reading for all my graduate education students.
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