One Nation, Two Cultures

Rating:
Summary: A Delight for Liberals
Review: As conservative Judge Richard Posner pointed out in the New York Times Book Review (Dec 19, 1999), Ms. Himmelfarb unwittingly makes quite the opposite case from the one she intended to make, criticizing an American society that could easily impress an observer as being on its "moral uppers". This book should be read alongside Alan Wolfe's "One Nation After All" published a year earlier. Wolfe's book, based on hundreds of interviews conducted for the Middle Class Morality Project of the centrist Russell Sage Foundation, found that most Americans, both liberal and conservative, have developed a complex moral and theological style that holds fast to traditional values while embracing religious and cultural diversity. A better informed population is now more likely to substitute individual conscience and personal responsibility for blind acceptance of authority. The book concluded that the "culture war" theory of America was largely a fiction cooked up by right wing intellectuals and the news media --- which habitually portray the country in terms of stereotyped divisions over moral, racial, and social issues.

Rating:
Summary: Never let facts get in the way of a good story
Review: Don't get me wrong. Himmelfarb had me nodding my head in solid agreement with most of her more general points. Then I hit the section where she discusses the Boston gun project and gives total credit for the impressive reduction in juvenile gun homicides to one dinky little church-based program. Whoa, momma! I happen to know a lot about the Boston project and Himmelfarb is way off base on how it worked and who else was involved, namely the entire local, state and federal law enforcement and social service community. It made me very skeptical of the reliability of the rest of her "facts." I revised my judgment of the book from solid analysis to entertaining but subjective polemic. Too bad, because I agree with her bottom line.

Rating:
Summary: The Cultural Truth Not Minced With Political Correctness
Review: Gertrude Himmelfarb's One Nation, Two Cultures considers the growth and ideals of American society after its cultural revolution in the 1960s. From religion and family concepts to changes in the legal and social structure of American society, this provides an excellent survey of modern times.

Rating:
Summary: The Loss & Hope of Recovery of Civil Society
Review: Himmelfarb writes an interesting jaunt into the cultural revolution and the aftermath that we now live within.

She focuses on the role of civil society, that undergirding structure of morals and values which transcends the laws and judicial process and makes them workable. We are told that this civil society is the "seedbed of virute." It mediates between extreme individualism and the all-powerful state.

The downgrading of heros and history and good works causing the moral dilemma we are in, but there are glimpses of working together to shape a new cultural ethic, a new civil society.

The dissident culture overtook the majority culture in the '60s and has prevailed against a somewhat diverse and apathetic, content, passive majority turned minority culture, now the dissident culture.

Wisely, Himmelfarb concludes that government intervention with the legislative/judicial solutions to cultural problems will not succeed.

Her prediction? Revival and expansion will occur for the dissident culture, however they will not regain the majority, nor will religion play the large role of influence they once enjoyed but rather moral grounds will replace them. Counterrevolutions are more difficult to achieve and maintain.

Well worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: Gertrude Himmelfarb, Master of Culture
Review: I recently read Mrs. Himmelfarb's book and was thoroughly impressed by its cogent and well supported arguments. The book provides valuable information for both cultural conservatives and cultural liberals. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in an intelligent examination of modern American culture.

Rating:
Summary: A Neo-Conservative perspective on the culture
Review: Irving Kristol - Gertrude Himmelfarb's husband - once made the point that in the USA an 18 year old girl could dance nude in a bar, so long as she was paid the minimum wage. This book explores the existence of two cultures in the USA. Whilst pollsters and demographers can break down these cultures into many different groups, there is a broad line which can be drawn between the cultures. Cultures are largely defined by attitude in the modern world, as opposed to ethnic or Quaker garb, for instance, and Himmelfarb seeks to chart the salient differences in attitude. In that she is largely successful. It is a thought provoking book. Her use of Adam Smith's insights does her credit - there always was a looser culture based on the security of aristocratic position, which meant loose behaviour would not be economically disastrous for its practitioner. At day's end, the underlying viewpoint that it is unfortunate that there are two cultures, can be rejected or accepted as one chooses. Indeed, if the argument is accepted that there are two delineated cultures, then it clearly shows that government has no business interfering in the educating of children to try to homogenize the culture. The existence of two cultures removes the foundation for the confidence that demonstrating how to use a condom in school classes without parental permission is in any way appropriate or has ever been appropriate. Himmelfarb cannot be faulted for not dealing with subjects beyond her book's compass, but it should be appreciated that this book does not deal with, in any detail, the etiology of the counter-culture or its long march to cultural hegemony, nor does it suggest any concrete proposals for the protection of the traditional Puritan culture from governmental intrusion. For anyone who can remember both 1963 and 1971, it is likely to at least provide a conversation piece. Himmelfarb has done a sound job.

Rating:
Summary: A Neo-Conservative perspective on the culture
Review: Irving Kristol - Gertrude Himmelfarb's husband - once made the point that in the USA an 18 year old girl could dance nude in a bar, so long as she was paid the minimum wage. This book explores the existence of two cultures in the USA. Whilst pollsters and demographers can break down these cultures into many different groups, there is a broad line which can be drawn between the cultures. Cultures are largely defined by attitude in the modern world, as opposed to ethnic or Quaker garb, for instance, and Himmelfarb seeks to chart the salient differences in attitude. In that she is largely successful. It is a thought provoking book. Her use of Adam Smith's insights does her credit - there always was a looser culture based on the security of aristocratic position, which meant loose behaviour would not be economically disastrous for its practitioner. At day's end, the underlying viewpoint that it is unfortunate that there are two cultures, can be rejected or accepted as one chooses. Indeed, if the argument is accepted that there are two delineated cultures, then it clearly shows that government has no business interfering in the educating of children to try to homogenize the culture. The existence of two cultures removes the foundation for the confidence that demonstrating how to use a condom in school classes without parental permission is in any way appropriate or has ever been appropriate. Himmelfarb cannot be faulted for not dealing with subjects beyond her book's compass, but it should be appreciated that this book does not deal with, in any detail, the etiology of the counter-culture or its long march to cultural hegemony, nor does it suggest any concrete proposals for the protection of the traditional Puritan culture from governmental intrusion. For anyone who can remember both 1963 and 1971, it is likely to at least provide a conversation piece. Himmelfarb has done a sound job.

Rating:
Summary: A balanced, thought-provoking analysis....
Review: It is amazing what a skilled writer with intellect can do within a realatively few pages. Professor Gertrude Himmelfarb does an incredible, balanced analysis of the tumultuous changes that have polarized many American cultural writers into ideologues. She reduces this polarization to simplicity without offending the staunchest zealot. Her basic premise is that the formerly dominant American culture has become the disssident culture and the formerly dissident culture has become the dominant culture. She discusses some of the resulting consequences.

She begins with an insightful historical perspective and then tackles tough American issues such as Civil Society, the Family, the Law and Polity, and Religion. She concludes with a summary of the ethics gap between the two cultures and some modest predictions. A fascinating read.

One reviewer called the book "A coherent, devastating attack." Another called it "An elegant , literate defense of nineteenth-century English mores and morals." It is much more. It will make you wonder what the future has in store for us....

Rating:
Summary: An Internecine Struggle for America's Soul
Review: The President of the United States-an admitted serial womanizer-is accused of raping a supporter twenty years ago, never denies the charge, and hardly a murmur is heard for him to come clean. Instances of children bringing arsenals to school and willingly murdering fellow classmates are becoming shamefully commonplace. Human excrement is used in a blasphemous "art exhibit" at a prestigious museum in Brooklyn and when New York City's mayor pulls its public funding, noisy bashaws condemn him not for his failure to close the den of perversion but for ending it taxpayer-funded hand outs. A nazi-admiring hit man, Jack Kevorkian, fulfills contracts on over 100 depressed and ailing individuals but goes free and becomes something of a cult celebrity before his murder-for-hire practice is shut down. Every one of these atrocities is a real situation in modern day America.

All of these developments occur with the encouraging support of many movers and shakers and much of the public at large gives them at least tacit approval. Still millions of others lament that such depravity his infiltrated the United States. How could both of those attitudes exist simultaneously. In her erudite treatise, historian Gertrude Himmelfarb argues that we have become one nation with two often opposing cultures. The two cultures she identified are similar in one way; each is having an increasingly difficult time comprehending the other one. Topics like abortion, homosexuality, profanity, a sex-obsessed and brutally violent popular culture, and cross-dressing, are discussed openly and often celebrated by one segment, while the other feels such pernicious activities should not even be mentioned in polite society. One side cherishes religion, traditional family, patriotism, self-control, self-respect (not self-esteem), time-honored manners, and personal responsibility; traits dismissed as archaic and somewhat harmful by the antipodal culture. One side fights to make it a crime to burn the American flag while the other strives to legalize same-sex marriage.

The author, a Victorian epicure, writes as objectively as possible but is obviously tendentious toward the scoffed at counter-culture of traditionalists. She repeatedly documents how crime rates, racial tensions, illegitimacy, declining educational standards and so many of the other problems that the progressive culture seems concerned about were indeed far better when the counter-culture's viewpoint was prevalent.

Fanatically liberal readers may disagree with many of the author's arguments, but only those whose minds have been slammed shut will fail to find her dialectics thought-provoking.

Rating:
Summary: A sad decline
Review: This foolish and confused book demonstrates Ms. Himmlefarb's sad decline from distinguished historian to irrelevant crank. Ignoring a mountain of emperical data, the author simply divides all social phenomena into two classes: things Gertrude Himmlefarb likes, and things she doesn't. Any thing in the latter class is cited as proof of society's inevitable decline. It's hard to recall a book so breathtakingly solopsistic since "The Greening of America."