Culture Briefs

The leftist mind

“Back in the 1960s, or even early ’70s, if you asked the average intelligent person to name a philosopher, the answer would as likely have been Jean-Paul Sartre as it would have been Aristotle or Plato. ’The Pope of Existentialism,’ as people called him, enjoyed household-name status. …

“What Sartre actually offers us is a paradigmatic example of the leftist mind, in all its dodgy enthusiasms. Sartre’s early existentialism presents a nihilistic conception of human freedom that still informs some forms of liberal thought; his later political writings seethe with the pathologies of the far left, including an admiration for bloodletting, so long as it targets democrats and capitalists and Westerners generally. … His oeuvre stands as an absolute warning about the wrong turns that moral and political thought can take when untethered from nature or any sense of reality. Were Sartre alive today, he doubtless would place the blame for September 11 and Palestinian suicide bombings on their victims — defending, as he frequently did, the indefensible.”

—Brian C. Anderson, writing on “The Absolute Intellectual,” in the February/March issue of Policy Review

Golf Zen

“It’s not so much the game of golf that influences manners and morals; it’s the Zenlike golf ideal. The perfect human being, defined by golf, is competitive and success-oriented, yet calm and neat while casually dressed. … He has achieved mastery over the great dragons: hurry, anxiety and disorder.

“His DVD collection is organized, as is his walk-in closet. His car is clean and vacuumed. His frequently dialed numbers are programmed into his phone, and his rate plan is well tailored to his needs. His casual slacks are well pressed, and he is so calm and together that next to him, Dick Cheney looks bipolar.”

—David Brooks, writing on “Our Sprawling Supersize Utopia,” April 4 in the New York Times Magazine

Return to faith

“Five years ago, at Columbine High School in a middle-class Colorado suburb, two teenage boys in trench coats strode through the hallways gunning down their classmates, killing 12 students and a teacher. Then, like suicide bombers, they took their own lives.

“When people attack our country from without, we can deal with that — conquer Afghanistan, invade Iraq, control the borders, tighten security. But when the attack comes from within our country and from within our culture, it shakes us to our core. … [W]hen the horrors break out from within the culture, when children start killing children, when the place of death is the neighborhood school, there is nowhere to hide. …

“Since Columbine — and maybe, in some circles, because of Columbine — a revival seems to have taken place among American teenagers.

“Researchers are baffled by the precipitous drop in teen pregnancy, which is now at the lowest rate since anyone has kept track. The rate of sexual activity is down, and virginity has become not just more prevalent but socially approved. All of this while the adult-run entertainment industry keeps barraging them with more and more temptation. Those baffled researchers have also found that three out of five teenagers are saying that their religion is either ’pretty important’ or ’very important’ in their lives. And that religion, overwhelmingly, is Christianity.”

—Gene Edward Veith, writing on “Sick unto death?” in Saturday’s issue of World