be a royal. during these trips, i was able to see the buckingham palace machinery on the road. to get to know the senior officials and to get a feel for the atmosphere around the queen and the way her household has changed, from the early days when it was run entirely by acristocrat tickic men. in trinidad, he master of the household pointed to a half dozen footmen, one of whom was a woman, all dressed in nave where boots. she same over the in he has amassers degree in paleontology. a far cry from -- >> you can watch this and other programs juvenile at book booktv.org. >> now daniel felony -- daniel flynn looks back when

intellectuals were just as important to popular cultures as entertainers. this gist over an hour. >> good evening. my names patrick daneen and it's a great pleasure to have with is tonight daniel j. flynn, the author of an extremely provocative, interesting, and timely look, called blue collar intellectuals. it's timely, certainly given the current political climate in recent days every op-ed piece in the washington post was devoted in one way or another to comments made over the weekend by senator rick santorum questioning whether students should go to college, questioning whether college can be seen as a salutary force, a

salutary endeavor of the younger generation. and i think this question of whether or not in some ways a kind of disconnect has occurred between the -- between what takens place at the highest levels of academia and the sense of a distance growing with every man america has animated some september. s by senator santorum and even in the blackdrop lies a number of findings in a recent book called "coming apart" that explores what divide growing between kind of an elite america of college educated upwardly mobile citizens and those who have tend not to be a part of what you might call the sweep stairs.

-- sweepstakes, so i think daniel flynn is exploring these themes and it's a timely look at the divide opened between intellectuals and the broader american citizenry. mr. flynn is the author of this book, "blue collar intel leg to alls" his other blacks include a conservative history of the american left, and intellectual morons, how ideology makes smart people fall for student ideas. -- stupid ideas. he has appeared on o'riley factow, fox and friends and other public affair programs. his articles have appeared in the boston globe, national review, city journal, and the american conservative. he writes a monday column for human events. he lives in his native massachusetts with his wife and children. i'd also like to acknowledge tonight's cosponsor of the

event, the enter collegiate studies institute. we have had a long and fruitful relationship with the institute. isi has been teaching future leaders about the timeless principles that make america free and prosperous, the core ideas behind the free market, the american founding, and western civilization. membership in isi is free to students and professors, perhaps even nonstudentsstudents and nonprofessors. as a member you benefit from isis reich program of on cam put evens, publications, conferences, seminars and fellowship and internship opportunities. students who have not yet looked into their summer honors program, i recommend it strongly. i've been long participant of the mentor in the program and it's an invaluable experience. isi membership cards are available outside. feel free to fill out a card and leave it with the representative from isi here with us here

today. so i thank isi for its past, present, and i hope future support. with that, let me bring to the stage and ask for a hoya welcome to mr. daniel j. flynn. [applause] >> thank you. thank you to enter collegiate stewedies institute and the forum for having me. my voice is going at an inopportune time but i think i can get a half hour or so out of it. i come to today by many different modes of transportation, over many different miles, planes, trains, and automobiles, and as i was traveling today, almost didn't make it because of a storm but i was reminded why i wrote "blue collar intellectuals." and you canlash -- can learn a

lot by people in a culture by the way they pass the time when the travel. and on the plane, whether i liked it or not there was a television set on in my face in the airport lounge, televisions blaring everywhere. almost as if people can't be alone with their own thoughts. can't find a quiet place to read in the back of a cab. television sets. i think on the train, that's probably the place where you learn a lot about people the most because it's loud and tough to converse. and in my lifetime, very recently in your lifetime, the primary activity that people engage in on trains to pass the time was to read. they read magazines, they read newspapers, they read books. some people still read on trains. but most people are not reading third. playing with gadgets. texts one another, playing video games on the train. they're not reading. and i can't help but notice how people use their leisure time

has large by become a waste of time. there's almost an aggressiveness to the stupidity. invasiveness to the stupidity, and part of the problem i'm addressing in my book, lies with the everyman. but there's another half of the equation that lies with intellectuals, and i don't think there are -- a lot of intellectuals who lament the dumbing down of america but don't consider themselves part of this, and i consider them a part of it. if you look at -- particularly on campus right now. campuses are cloistered from the rest of society in a negative sense you can sigh they're intellectual ghettos. you have academics who speak at conferences that very few people attend, they write books and art that nobody reads, and they speak in an insider jargon, really opaque language that i don't think even they understand. my book is about a time in

america when the intellectuals opened up the conversation to all all-comers and the everyman reaches for something higher rather than drag his arms ever lower, and it's really the story of the american dream. the blue collar election is the story of the american dream, when people think about the american dream, they think about money, think about horatio algier's rags to riches stories, and that's part of it. but there's another part of the american dream, kind of american striver culture, that has to do with education, has to do with intellectual betterment, cultural betterment, and this is what blue collar intellectuals is about. i can't think of any of the intellectuals that better fits this american dream than a fellow named will durant. and you -- some of you probably

know him as the author of that gigantic series called "the story of civilization." spent almost a half century writing the history of the world. 11 volumes. and will durant took the interesting part of -- his father was an immigrant to this country. he worked in a factory. he had one of these supersized families of 11. we don't see too much anymore. i think most pert inept for our conversation is that will durant's dad couldn't read or write. his son, in 1926, wrote a book called "the story of philosophy." and in 1927 this was the best-selling book in the united states. it's not a celebrity book, not a diet book. it's a book about philosophy, and it's the best selling book in america, and it started off as a series of lectures that

durant gave a in greenwich village where working men, maybe like his father, came insuring paid a quarter, paid a dime, and listened to lectures, and perhaps left more enlightened than they came in. the lectures became the little blue books, these 10,000, 15,000 word pamphlets and they sold millions of them, and durant wrote a number of them, on plato and aristotle, and people would buy these little blue books, and then they were bound together in a big book by two guys name simon and schuster, who were known for printing crossword puzzle books. will durant, in one generation of the durant family, there's an illiterate, the dad. and in the next generation, the durant family is atop the bestseller list.

and that to me is sort of an only in america story. part of the american dream as well. will durant was always doing what he wasn't supposed to be doing. certainly wasn't supposed to be atop the best seller list. he went to the seminary and made his mother proud, was going to become a catholic priest. but he didn't find god in the seminary. he found atheism, and he fell into a different church, church of socialistsists and anarchistd he started giving lectures and he was billed as a professor at seton hall and he gave a lecture on sex in the catholic church, which was pretty explosive, and will durant's mother, who had been so proud of him for trying to become a catholic priest, learned on the front page of her hometown noone her son had been ask communicated from the church.

he went on and -- the anarchists accept him. if you're a convert to catholic chunks catholics accept you and like you but they're going -- not going to make you pope. the anarchists in new york city, they were so small they were willing to make whoever their pope, and will durant became the principle of the school, and the principal and the guidance counselor and all. and being it as anarchist school, people would pelt him with snowmobiles. girls witness get up from the difficults and start skipping rope inside the classroom. and at a certain point, will durant went native and he looked and there was a girl he was spending a lot of time with in the classroom. she was 15 years old. and he fell in love with her. and even at the time this was

quite scandalous. she roller skated to city hall in new york for their wedding ceremony. how young she was. and the judge who was presiding condemned durant as a cradle robber and said, under know circumstances are you going to consummate this marriage until the girl turns 16. so will durant was really an aprostate to marital norms, a political aprostate as well. the socialists loved him and he loved socialism. he called him a socialist until the end of his days and he welcomed the soviet union as sort of a second coming, and so when will durant went to the soviet union in 1933, and realized the country of his dreams did not match up with his reality, sitting in front of his face, rather than come home as so many other ideological tourists had done from web dubois, well durant came back

to the united states after monthness the soviet union and told his fellow leftists-this place is a gigantic prison, and they didn't like this. he was the hottest writer in america and they wouldn't publish his articles harper's or the atlantic. but that was will durant. will durant was the apostate historian because this guy dared -- the audacity to write the history of the world and he wasn't an historian. he got his ph.d in philosophy. worse than that, when he added his wife on as a co-author, she hadn't even graduated from conditional. so historians didn't look kindly upon this. this was an age of specialization, when historians were writing more and more about less and less, and will durant was anything but a specialist. he was a generalist. he brought all the facts and synthesized them into one.

historians didn't like this. this was time of the proverbial historian writing about a handicapped lesbian in the fiji islands, and will durant was saying, let's right about everything. so historians didn't care for that. and the more will durant got -- the higher he got on the bestseller list, the less historians cared for him. he was always sort of doing -- marching to the beat of his own drummer. he was someone that did his own thing, and if you look at a snapshot, you can say he is damaging himself, but over the long haul, durant was -- this was a good thing for him over the course of his career, and everyone generally found a way to like will durant. it was historians who gave him so much grief and reviewed his backs harshly, they came around

and in 1968 theywardded him the pull lit -- pulitzer prize in history. this politics, the stalwart democrat for all the hiss days, supported fdr and truman and hubert humphrey. he was very vocal about that. and in the 1970s, a republican president awarded him the presidential medal of freedom. his marriage, which we would certainly think was destined to fail, lasted 68 years. the marriage to this 15-year-old girl leased 68 years, and i was fruitful, and a lot of people talk about not being able to live with someone else. will and aerial durant literally couldn't live with one another. they died within days of each other, will durant in his 90s, aerial durant in her 80s, and

even his religion, the catholic church, ex-communicated him, they came around, too. not only administering last rights but by the end of his days in 1960s, you actually had catholic universities inviting him to give the graduation day speeches, commencement addresses. it was hard to dislike will durant. one intellectual disliked him intensely for pared of time in 1926 when durant was on the cusp of fame and the story of philosophy was on the best seller list, he was invited to give a keynote address at harvard university, and sitting in the audience was a young guy very much like will durant, a guy named mortimer adler, from a working class background, immigrant parents, also went to columbia was part of the philosophy program at columbia, but basically was exiled because

he couldn't quit hectoring john dewey and writing him nasty letters saying you contradict yourself, and they said, you get lost. and when -- as durant was teaching at the labor temple in greenwich village, adler was doing the same thing at a place called the people's institute. so it was like a coke and pepsi thing. you can't tell the difference between coke and pepsi, but there's a fierce rivalry there nonetheless. and it shows you on at least an -- frommed from adler's part being an enthusiast of a great book didn't always make you a good man, and it didn't in this case, and in this audience he remember he wanted to get up and read a review he had written about durant's back that was set to appear in the nation magazine but thankfully he didn't do that. and didn't harm himself in that way. durant -- i'm sorry, adler was

not always -- like said, he wasn't always most admirable of characters. easy for a lot of people to dislike but he had a philosophy of life that is very detucktive, at least to me, and -- very seductive. an education should not be the avocation of youth it should be something you do throughout your life, and he certainly lived it. his unique views of education, i think in large part, they come about because he had such a unique education. mortimer adler dropped out of high school. he never bothered to finish the requirements to get his college degree. his undergraduate degree, and he somehow wound up with a ph.d from an ivy league institution. who has a cv like that? no one does. just mortimer adler. and it's fitting that adler,

when he takes a degree of fame in the way that durant takes fame, adler was on the cover of "time" magazine, and the subheadline read, should professors commit suicide? this was in jest, i thing. adler was a professor, too. but only partly in jest. what adler was offering throughout his life was education minus the middle man. he did this by johnny appleseeding great book discussion groups in the united states. this is right after world war ii. we just defeated the nazis and the japanese and we have this new challenge with the cold war, and americans want to know what is it about our civilization that's worth defending. the great books provided them with that, and these discussion groups were at their peak. 50,000 americans meeting in high

school gymnasium union halls, ymca, hairdressers and nurses and mechanics, meeting to discuss cervantes and shakes spears and the federalist. certainly it was a great thing. certainly adler was offering education, and that was the big project of his life 5. 4 volume set of books sold by inpsych -- encyclopedia britain nick could, and he could sell their products. think about this for a second. in mid-century america, door-to-do sales men could sell vacuums, flatwear perfect the era of door to door rapists. they could sell products puppet the idea you're going door-to-door and sell 54 volume

set of all the books people try to escape reading in college, that's absolutely amazing. it shows you what a failure mortimer adler was and tells you something about the american people at mid-century. it buttresses the idea that this was the best educated people in the history of the world, and i really think it was. i think today, if you were to good door-to-door and try to give away a million sets of the great books of the western world, i don't think you would find a million willing recipients. yet somehow in the 1950s and 60s, they sold 54 million books. absolutely amazing to me. and for adler, the basic dilemma, the basic challenge to america, what he called the riddle of american democracy, was this. how do you get the education that is reserved for the ruling elite in nondemocratic societies? how do you get that elite education and make it the education of everybody?

a democratic society? everybody heard the phrase, education, fit for a king, and we sort of know what that conveys. if the king doesn't get this education, the kingdom may soon become a tyranny and everybody is in trouble. well, it may be a bet of a utopian proposition to think that the education fit for a king is going to be the education for everybody. probably not going to happen as much as mortimer adler wanted it to happen. but to the extent to which we don't have the education fit for a king being everybody's education, the democracy is going summer. with a kingdom, one guy rules. in america, we have 311 million people who rule. so it's a little more complicated, and as adler's colleague and friend, robert hutchins, the chancellor and profit the university of chicago. the way he put it and the

introduction was that if you don't have that liberal arts education, you're going to have people who are ill equipped to govern their fellow citizens but worse still you're going to have people who are ill equipped to gotch their own souls. now, hutchins and adler at the university of chicago had big dreams of turning the school into a great books institution. didn't happen. they made some reforms here and there and probably the biggest one was they killed the original monsters of the midway. not the chicago bears but the university of chicago football team. and they thought to themselves, what does football have to do with education? and got rid of football at georgetown for a while. i went to a game and my brother was reffing the game but the got rid of the football team. and one of the big thing hat

happened when hutchins was run the university of chicago, the hired a guy by the name of milton freeman, a famous economist, and freedman remembers the university of chicago days. he said during the hutchins adler era, a favorite wisecrack was that the university of chicago was a baptist institution to which the good presbyterians sent their children to be converted to catholicism by a jew. it's tempt took thing of freedman has having been born in the university of chicago. coming out in a bunker's out and nerd glasses. but milton freedman was from somewhere very different from the university of chicago. he was from new jersey. and in rawway judge, milton freedman's immigrant family had various in-home businesses. he would get up in the morning good, downstairs, scoop ice

cream at the family's ice cream parlor. he got a state scholarship to rutgers, and when he was at rutgers, he waited tables. not for a wage. didn't get paid. this is consistent with his later views on minimum wage. but didn't get paid. he got paid in a meal, and this resulted in the only c on his record at rutgers because he had to rush after eating his stuff his face, he had to rush to his nextclass, and also foreshadowing his later economic outlook, thump -- enthusiasm for capitalism, he was quite an entrepreneur at rutgers. they had these sort of corny antiquated traditions where freshman had to wear green ties and white white socks, so freedn went to the freshman doors selling green ties and white socks. he partnered up with barnes &

noble. i didn't know barnes & noble existed but the partnered with them for a book buyback scheme where freedman got a cut of all of the books that barnes & noble bought back and got another cut when they were sold back to the other student test beginning of the following semester. so he was an entrepreneur. any point in saying this is that milton freedman was a guy who, rather controversial, made the statement that economics is only -- scientific theory is only useful in relation how much it conforms to the world that we live in. and people didn't like that. milton freedman's economics worked partly because milton freedman worked, and if you contrast him with the other great economists of the 20th

20th century, john maynard keynes. keynes was born into academia, his mom was a social gospel do-gooder, like a professional volunteer. keynes went to eaton, and he went to cambridge, fancy british schools. he cavorted with this free, wheel, free-love, socialist bisexual clique when he was in his 20's or so. you can't get further away from rawway, new jersey, as that. and the point of all this is that sometimes people who live in comfort are the only ones who can really afford to have ideas that don't work in the real world. here was a guy, keynes, who was living up in in the ether, and he pushed a lot of ethereal

theories and i don't think you can say that about milton freedman, he wasn't just an economist who appealed to other economists. won the nobel prizin' 1976. part of the reason why so many noneconomiests know freedman is because he was able to pass on interesting complex ideas to the layman. he did it in his book, and he certainly did this on pbs with his ten, part series, free to choose. and free to choose, competing with the likes of the dukes of hazard and the jeffersons are drug -- drawing millions of viewers. the viewers were watching the 1970s turn into the 1980s and the template that was laid out in" freeh to choose" what the policies in he 1980s,

partly here and part live abroad. the producer of free to choose was a guy named bob, and he relayed a very interesting story that, around that time he wanted to get great minds together, and so he called a man very different from milton freedman, at this point milton friedman retired to san francisco from the university of chicago, and friedman being this professor, bob was a very different man, hulking, giant of man who was not a professor but was for most of his -- for a great period of his life a long scheyerman -- longshoreman, and all we know about him is what's he told us, so he is a man of mystery. ...

and was selected president. talking about dwight eisenhower. everyone wants to read what the president is reading. you had this very bizarre phenomena and where the intellectual everyone was looking to for answers was not a harvard professor or some a head on tv but was a longshoreman who had a day job, a guy who loaded and unloaded ships on the docks of san francisco, got one of his

thumbs chopped off working dangerous job and kept that day job for the next 15 or so years. he was a writer and also a longshoreman but he was a working man first. parker was someone who wrote this book the true believer and was obsessed with what he called itharper was someone who wrote this book the true believer and was obsessed with what he called it the/stalin decade. so many smart people did so many stupid things. so many otherwise good people committed acts of evil. so many independent people going the herd. eisenhower was not the only one we gristle certainly not the only president who was into eric offer. he became a 1-man rebuttal to the proculture. in 1967, a guy who lived not far

from here, saw him on television and cbs news featuring eric hoffer. was supposed to be a 5 minute photo op turned into a 50 minute discussion between johnson and hoffer. they hit it off like brothers. hoffer apologize for not being able to attend a state dinner he had been invited to because he didn't own a tie. johnson said that is okay. next time show up without your tie and i will take mine off in solidarity. and they were sitting there as happy as could be and i contrast this strange meeting in 1967 between london and johnson and perhaps the only intellectual who liked him at the time, eric hoffer and fast forward a generation and a similar meeting taking place with this

president. remember the beer summit a couple years ago? president obama, former harvard law student meeting with officer james crowley in cambridge, massachusetts, they were meeting because crowley arrested one of obama's friends henry louis gates and people have all sorts of opinions on what happened. i am not going to get into that but the situation is what i'm interested in. that beer summit. i can think of a natural setting where that police officer and that president would meet and have a free-flowing conversation. i can't think of a situation where it wouldn't be forced. i look at that as a metaphor for barack obama's party and eric hoffer's party that those eric hoffer democrats you have presidents that may not have come from the same place. he said he came from the united

states. amen of mystery. he may not have come from the same place but they spoke the same language. you read the new york times a month ago, there was a piece saying that the president's campaign -- go for the white working class, the eric hoffer democrats are not even part of the strategy. say what you might about that as a strategy. but it tells you something about how world has changed. there don't seem to be such an species as an eric hoffer democrat anymore. the last time want to talk about before we open up is a guy who was very like eric hoffer in some ways. didn't own a telephone or television. didn't drive a car and no tie and ray bradbury the

science-fiction writer, these sort of like the future status to. he is a strange creature. a technophobia sci-fi writer. ray bradbury when he was growing up didn't have a lot going for him. he was a nerd's nerd and he moved to los angeles when he was 14 or so and used to ride around on roller skates hounding the likes of marlene dietrich and judy garland and clark gable for autographs. the vision of this putt the teenage kid on horseback saying give me your autograph. he was enough to scare the other outcasts. he was an outcast among outcasts. the other thing he didn't have going for him was he was very poor. so for that ray bradbury, one of his brothers shared a pull out

couch in their parents' living room all the way until the time that ray bradbury got married to. i wrote about it in the american conservative a month or so back if you want to check that article on line about ray bradbury. also right about him in "blue collar intellectuals". when it came time for him -- she graduated high school in 1938. came time for him to go to college. the tragedy was he couldn't go to college. one of these rick santorum guys -- guys rick santorum was talking about. he couldn't go to college. the money to do so in the depression, rather than go to college ray bradbury went to the library three days a week. he did this for years, he read and he read and he read. at 18 years old ray bradbury had a better understanding of education than our society does

all these years later. today is all that piece of paper. we give you that paper, that paper and so on. ray bradbury could have cared less about the diploma. all he cared about was learning. one of the things i love about ray bradbury is when people ask -- he is the only blue-collar intellectual who is still alive. he said he is a proud alumna of los angeles public library. that is absolutely wonderful. my voice needed that. the common denominator, "blue collar intellectuals" 11 are from different religions with political outlooks all over the board and all different fields.

literature and philosophy and economics, history. there's one common denominator and that is books. reading. these are people who better themselves and made america a better because they were readers. i can help but look at the society we are in now and see that the book is under attack. we see the closing of borders last year as a sign of this but even more so, every mid-size city in america seem they're used bookstores are closing. para the government report that wants to replace books for school kids with ipads. in my own state of massachusetts there is a school called the cushing's academy. one of these elite prep schools. the head master got rid of all the books and a library.

$40,000 a year for education and not get a book in your library. instead of -- he took the money they would normally use on books and bought three flat screen televisions and a cappuccino machine and renamed their library a learning center. if that is orwellian i don't know what is. he said this is not 1984. it is 1984! it is fahrenheit 451 too. if you know ray bradbury's book fahrenheit 4514 lot of people the surface reading of that book is it is about censorship. on one level it is about censorship. but the deeper meaning of fahrenheit 451 is it is about a society that was well into illiteracy by passive education so when people came to bird -- when people came to burn the books nobody cared because

nobody read books anymore. i'm not saying that is where we are but it seems we have taken a few steps in that direction. to illustrate this point via i do a lot of research in the book and archives and interviews and i don't want to name names or embarrass anyone. i am going to read you a few quotations from blue-collar -- from "blue collar intellectuals" to illustrate where we are as a society. video gaming is a new form of literacy. reality shows challenge our emotional intelligence. who cares if johnny can't read? the value of books is overstated. if you are not on myspace you don't exist. the truth is multitasking as

much as we need air. down is up. black is white. stupid is the new smart. thank you so much. look forward to your questions. [applause] [inaudible] >> identify yourself. [inaudible] >> that was very interesting. i have been concerned about another development in the academic -- institutional world which is the limiting of

language. there is a jargon that has developed and it seems -- a few years ago i was reading a lot of reports and i noticed the cross over from one discipline to another, about a thousand words, what we sort of limited to and i was wondering if you noted anything like that? >> words like problematic? >> there is -- >> social construction? >> i see it more in the un system. and in humanitarian assistance and international law. it is very concerning to me because they are not getting the nuances of stuff. >> even mechanics have jargon.

i was in the military, if i start talking marine jargon they don't know what i am talking about so to an extent everyone has jargon. it is a healthy thing. my hope--i hope my book demonstrates this. is healthy for intellectuals to engage with the world that you have a difficult time engaging with the world if all of your communication is laced with jargon. if you remember 15 years ago there was a professor who pulled a prank. his name was alan sobel. he was at new york university. there was this post-modern deconstruction missed journal printing all these academic articles that didn't make sense to him. so he decided to write a parity of the articles and make all sorts of our greatest claims regarding physics and social

sciences like basically how feminism contributed to the concept of equality among mathematicians and things like that the. the thing got published. it says something about academia that something like that would get published. it should have been a reality check and the law professors said -- they shouldn't have gotten mad of invasion of the matter themselves. they got mad at the guy pulling the franc which makes it even funnier. when someone gets a prank london and they get mad at the prankster it is always more funny. >> thank you. there any recent book holder collections that put those about

-- charles mary speaks to a part of fish tone and people who don't have more than a high school degree. a lot of bright people in that country. you think this is an opportunity for blue-collar intellectuals? >> there are certainly blue-collar intellectuals around today but less of them. there is a void which is why i wrote the book. there are not many intellectuals who are reaching out to curious educated way people. if you look today at a guy i don't always agree with but who is certainly making an effort like ken burns' making these every few years i wrote a scathing column about his prohibition movie because i thought of a with inaccurate but he is making an effort. ken burns -- history degree like

i do. and making the path come alive to make the deadlock. thomas salt, he writes books on economics. he would be another example of it. i haven't read this charles murray book. the one i would say about this controversy and rick santorum's comment about college not being for everybody the easy part of that equation is college is not for everybody. hardest part of that is people don't get that everybody is not for college. once you let everybody into college you are not going to uplift so much as bring college down a few notches. if you don't up with the education you will cater to the

uneducated. you see this with great inflation and someone paid the tuition. they feel the entitled to get the passing grade. there's a lot of pressure to give those. there's a lot of money coming into these institutions. it is -- there is this debate whether college is for everybody. college costs $40,000 a year, is not for everybody. with a person wants to go or not. >> people go to college expecting pieces of paper, but go ahead and get a job.

something that i noticed, agreed at the -- a lot of students feel this school -- the to school about this attitude why is political science taking a fine arts course? in your opinion do you feel colleges need to do a better job explaining why they need the well-rounded education or do you believe the path is more specialized? >> i was influenced -- higher learning in america by robert maynard hutchins and hutton's, what they wanted to do was essentials the provide a great books education in that someone

wanted -- they go to the professions themselves and set up separate professional schools accept you have professional schools side by side with liberal its education. among otherarts education. among other goals that they had. is this notion of liberal arts education, equipped to be a free man in a free society and without it you are ill equipped to govern your fellow citizens and ill-equipped to govern your own soul. i think the more and more we see college associated as sort of a utilitarian four years with the payoff of a good job, we are not seeing college in his right

light. it is to create well-rounded citizenry. if you take the large courses you will be equipped to do a lot of things where as i am sure 30 years ago there were people in computer science taking das and languages they don't use anymore. more specialized stuff gets obsolete. i don't know if ethics have never been obsolete. has been around a long time. why not just stick with the stuff that works? >> dan mccarthy of american conservative magazine. i thought i would challenge one of the things you brought up. one reason the great books program is useful because in a democracy it is important to the general citizenry to have this knowledge so they are fit to rule. you may be familiar with will more kendall who argued in is not an intellectual qualifications but a moral

qualifications. background for general education might not be quite as high and conversely people who are going to exert disproportionate influence on intellectuals of the upper crust. they need to be the focus of the education. it is not a good idea for college to be limited to those who are most ambitious or intellectually capable as opposed to being a general education. >> the first part about kendall, i didn't read a lot of kendall. i would say there's not a lot of difference. you are reading this section at the end on friendship. that is about morals to me. in reading that book it is an instruction how to live a good life. so part of its certainly is an intellectual endeavor but part is moral instruction.

the bible was one of the great books. reading othello on friendship began to be their intellectual endeavors. there's a moral component to it. i brought up adler as being a guy who was obsessed with the great books but did not make him a good man. he was a guy who had a big ego. he was someone getting into petty verbal spats with john dewey or gertrude stein. one of the publishers at simon and schuster, i wrote a letter to simon and he said you don't understand philosophy. i will give a tutorial.

i will be socrates. and he came off as a bit arrogant. and in his life despite reading all these great books here was a guy and i am reading his letters papers at the university of chicago. i am reading these letters. he is writing letters to his wife. basically trying to me it delayed her to sue him for divorce which he eventually succeeds in doing. he had a girlfriend all set up to be the new mrs. adler. i don't get into this in the book about i -- a much younger perspective, also had a boyfriend who had a criminal background and some of adler's friends got concerned and took out a private investigator and allegedly found he had been in short for a great amount of money and they suspected there

was so he got his divorce but it blew up in his face. if he paid more attention to some of the books he was promoting it might not have worked out that way. he did marry a lady down the road, 35 years younger. he was a vigorous guy until 98 years old and i admire the guy. he is an easy punching bag who did lot of stuff in his life that is a little sketchy but sometimes people who are flawed make great contributions. not just the scenaints that mak great contribution and -- i don't think it made him a more discerning person politically. everything that came around like world federalism and the ozone layer is different politically but i can't help but admire the guy because they had the right

idea about education. >> i have been with the army staff a long time. overeducated white views but i believe america was built on this premise. the old countries -- the whole idea of america is based on the idea that blue collar people artistic and intellectual capabilities and if they get a chance they will run. my son uses foreign service and -- when he began to read up a storm, read like a maniac i knew he was going to do great. sanding with my daughter going to libraries. impossible to go to school

without libraries. i also wonder if you can -- among these terrific intellectuals, the great union leaders in the early 20th century. they were really intellectual and very blue-collar and in the 60s and 70s some fantastically brilliant cigna's. there was a lot of -- were it is not intellectual public space. people can achieve at high levels. >> let me address that. one of the guys in the book, eric hoffer was a long time union member and member of the

longshoremen. is union was run by communist and he viewed the union as a second family. he had this one family in san francisco, and a second family, union. even though harry bridges was on the other side of the fence politically with hoffer being an anti-communist and harry bridges being a communist hoffer ever raise his voice in the union. he went to union meetings and on the picket line and all that kind of thing but when it came to the union did union thing. strange because he wrote this book the -- "the true believer" about joiners but he wasn't doing that as a union member. when he got out of the union and the people in the union knew him as the professor, that strange guy that writes books. when he got out of the union he opened his mouth.

i don't know there are a lot of people like eric hoffer or anyone like eric hoffer. the most fascinating figure of the 20th century because we know everything there is to know about everyone. we don't know anything about eric hoffer. we don't know when or where he was born. we meet him when he fills out a social security application when he is 4 years old. to the early life is a mystery. he had this -- the story about him that at 5 years old his father fell down a flight of stairs and the burly boy went blind and he and his mother died and miraculously he regained site and was reading everything he could get his hands on and it was believable because he was so articulate and well read and his father died and he went west and started like so many people in america. i am convinced 95%.