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You quite obviously know nothing of history, for example of the period in
which Adler was active. The Catholic Church's historic crimes
against the Jews (not to mention others) are well-known, so deal with
it. Secondly, it's one thing to be born into something and make the
best of it, but conversion is entirely another matter. A Jew
converting to Catholicism, that is, to defect to his persecutors, is a
turn to authoritarianism and the right. A conversion to a more
conservative and authoritarian denomination of the same religion might be
comparable. For example, a secular Jew turning orthodox. Or a
liberal Catholic joining the fascist Opus Dei. That Esperanto is
the creation of a member of a persecuted people is no accident, and if
you can't be honest about history, you need to refrain from engaging in
major discourse.<br><br>
On another note, there have been several critiques of the Great Books
program. I can't put my finger on more than one. I recall only the
first I ever read:<br><br>
Macdonald, Dwight. "The Book-of-the-Millennium Club," in
<i>Against the American Grain: Essays on the Effects of Mass Culture</i>
(New York: Vintage Books, 1965), pp. 243-261.<br><br>
There is a body of literature on intellectual popularization in the first
half of the 20th century. I don't recall whether this book addresses the
Great Books program, but here's an important reference:<br><br>
Rubin, Joan Shelley. <i>The Making of Middlebrow Culture</i>. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. <br><br>
I do not recall whether this noted author addresses the Great Books at
all:<br><br>
Cotkin, George. "Middle-Ground Pragmatists: The Popularization of
Philosophy in American Culture," <i>Journal of the History of
Ideas</i>, vol. 55, no. 2, April 1994, 283-302. <br><br>
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At 10:38 PM 10/29/2008, Will Cubbedge wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Your gutter language and your
association of my Catholic fath with anti-semitism on a public Esperanto
email list does not help the language any more than Adler's dumb use of
the word Esperanto. </blockquote></body>
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