Damned because its embrace of the good is not quite perfect

Sometimes interesting thoughts come from sources that seem sullied or needlessly confrontational or suffering from some other failing. Such is the case in Victor Davis Hanson's review of a book by Roger L. Simon in A Voice in the Cultural Wilderness. Some contentious assertions that are a source of potentially robust debate include.

In all these pathologies, Kimball sees the common denominator of enforced radical egalitarianism, or the human impulse to make us all the same, which for many trumps the desire for liberty and individualism. To paraphrase Aristotle and Tocqueville, Kimball is appalled at a certain human weakness that expresses itself in a willingness to become enslaved as the price of ensuring equality — as if by nature we value egalitarianism far more than liberty.

[snip]

In “Institutionalizing Our Demise,” Kimball dissects the contradictions of affirmative action and multiculturalism. There are of course many, but Kimball’s incisive indictment might be best summed up with the irony that those critics who have succeeded through the Western liberal tradition, and the magnanimity of Anglo-Protestant ethical values, are often the most likely to turn around and tear them down — often in worry that they are losing street cred as the supposedly permanently oppressed. America, which alone seeks to establish a meritocracy and a multiracial society united by shared values, is so often damned because its embrace of the good is not quite perfect.

[snip]

Some of the essays are lighter. Among the best is a review of Conn and Hal Iggulden’s The Dangerous Book for Boys, the recent English bestseller that sought to remind readers that once upon a time boys did and knew certain things to prepare themselves for marrying, raising a family, earning a living, and becoming the once-proverbial good citizen. Rough sports, reading about war heroes, memorizing moral aphorisms — all these may now seem trite. But what replaced them in inculcating manhood? Video games in the parental basement, no-score T-Ball, banning dodge ball, race/class/and gender chanting in grammar school? Kimball is a master of understated irony, and once more the theme of “being careful what you wish for” resonates: if today’s empowered women are frustrated that they cannot find any good men any more, one might reexamine the wages of what hyper-feminist doctrine has wrought in our schools and popular culture.

[snip]

A single review cannot do justice to this rich collection of essays; but in a brief epilogue to the volume, Kimball seems to sum up of his worldview with homage to the Anglo-American tradition of individualism, skepticism, and self-reliance. And while the forces of collectivism and big-government paternalism have been on the march in the Anglosphere, Kimball sees hope, both in the reaction of the populist Tea Party movement and the popular unease with what Britain has become. I might add as well that the current implosion of the eurozone reminds us that Great Britain still possesses some vestiges of common sense and skepticism not found on the continent.

If the West is the last hope of the endangered planet, then the last hope of the West is the English-speaking peoples who have best resisted the siren songs of utopian totalitarianism that on nearly three occasions in the twentieth century nearly destroyed civilization itself.

I found that list of what we want for boys a catalyst. "Marrying, raising a family, earning a living, and becoming the once-proverbial good citizen" - that sounds roughly right but not complete. What do we want for our young people? Perhaps

* Capable of and effective at self-improvement
* Marriage
* Family
* Net Productivity (produce more than you consume)
* Fully developed potential
* Good person
* Good citizen

Would that be a good outcome? It is worth considering.