Author (or Editor): Kersten, Katherine A. amd Pearlstein, Mitchell B. |
Title: Close to Home: Celebrations and Critiques of |
Fiction? Anthology? |
Publisher: MSP Books
( |
Date: 2000 |
ISBN: 1-892834-02-5 |
Series Name: |
Physical description: paperbound |
Relevance to DOASKDOTELL: family values; censorship |
Review: Book Review of Close to Home:
Celebrations and Critiques of America’s Experiment in Freedom,
by Katherine A. Kersten and Mitchell B. Pearlstein;
Introduction by Michael Novak; This anthology
presents 50 op-ed columns from each of the two authors. These pieces have
appeared in various Twin Cities newspapers, such as the Star Tribune, Pioneer
Press, Minneapolis-St. Paul Business, and the Twin Cities
Business Monthly. The brief essays
are organized topically, such as by “culture and religion,” “families,”
“education,” and “economic and social policy.” The book is offered by the American Experiment with larger gifts. The point of view of these essays varies from traditional conservatism
to libertarianism, with a touch of psychological aesthetic realism. I’ll come to a main point. In the essay “Textbooks Push
the Needs of ‘Self’ Over Marriage” (p. 51),
Katherine Kersten presents the “paradox”
that one needs to build a healthy self-image before approaching relationships
and marriage, and that some people advocate spending time alone with the
“self-date.” Then she writes: “The problem with this
approach to life is obvious. Everyone
will be caught up in his or her own ‘lifelong romance’ with self to give much
support to anyone else.” Yes, the hammer-blow hit the nail on the head. You don’t often hear even conservative
writers say this so bluntly (except perhaps George Gilder). Indeed, modern behavior codes centered on
personal responsibility emphasize rational self-interest (that drug use and
unprotected sex are potentially self-destructive, which they certainly are)
and mute the idea of communal social standards which are not supposed to be
questioned. There follows an essay “Aspiring to Perennial Adolescence,” which
obliquely criticizes the “Oscar Wilde-Dorian Gray” worship of youth as an
immutable value. There is another essay about a Elsewhere on this site and in my own two books I have
developed this idea myself (as in relation to psychological polarities and
the balanced-unbalanced personality axis).
But it is possible to encapsulate “supporting others” inside of
“self-interest” (almost as if to be inherited in object-oriented fashion) if
one builds into our social fabric the idea that taking care of others will be
expected. This obviously leads to the
gay marriage debate and gay parenting (but I didn’t see homosexuality
mentioned in the book). One is left with the paradox of (heterosexual)
marriage itself as an institution: it demands the passion of youth and
idealism, yet requires that these passions be submitted to a kind of
unquestioned realism, a willingness to give up some control of one’s own
internal aesthetic choices (to “grow up”).
You could say that marriage is the great “psychological
equalizer”—until you have to argue about inherited wealth. Many of the essays emphasize personal responsibility in a
more conventional way, with a healthy disagreement with the left-wing
attempts to settle issues with solidarity and political barter and to take
both power and responsibility away from the individual and to leave it with
the “professionals.” Kersten has a brief essay on Internet censorship
(“Protect students from Internet porn”) and properly explains the danger that
the most sadistic pornography can be “published” anonymously and made
available to children with no supervision, but she focuses her main
criticisms on the issue of allowing schools and libraries to filter Internet
porn rather than on trying to stop people from publishing it. Pearlstein presents an interesting
libertarian argument (“ In August 2001 The
American Experiment Quarterly published a special issue, Marriage and Children: A Symposium on
Making Marriage More Child Centered.
In “Are We Willing to Pay the Price?” William A. Galston
questions our “more individualistic, choice-cenetered,
gratification-oriented |
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