What the liberal elite believe in: their own wonderfulness

Jim Kalb attended commencement exercises at a prestigious liberal arts college last weekend and was struck by the unity of view of all the speakers. As he sums it up:

The concerns were always strictly practical, but with a sort of transcendent aura having to do with unprecedented radical transformation of social reality. Everything was amazing and wonderful. Everyone talked about “social change,” never public service or doing your duty to carry things forward. No one mentioned the conduct of life or the good, beautiful and true. I think at one point someone said it’s nice to keep up friendships, and a couple times people said it’s important to get to know the value of the cleaning lady as a contributor and human being. That was about it, though.

It’s hard to do justice to how self-satisfied the speakers were. The president of the college was over the top on how wonderful the graduates were and what they could and should do. The federal judge, the education professor and the student devoted special attention to the wonderfulness of the institution, the graduates and above all the speaker himself.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 30, 2006 04:26 PM | Send