Saturday, August 20, 2011

Wow, it's Hitler week at KPC

This time the venerable Harold Bloom plays the Hitler card wrt the Tea Party:

We have this horrible contemporary phenomenon in the Tea Party – a real menace not only to America but to the world. Because if it goes on like this, they will destroy our economy and they will destroy America. They have no democratic vision, and I don't mean with a capital “D”, I mean with a small “d”. They frighten me. They're like the early followers of Adolf Hitler, and I'm willing to be quoted on that. They are a sickening phenomenon. That is because they have not read deeply and widely enough. But then maybe they’re not to blame, because American education – even in elite universities – has become a scandal in my opinion. It has committed suicide.

Yikes!

I agree that American education has become a scandal, but not because the rise of the Tea Party.

Hat tip to LeBron who really buried the lede on this one.

1 comment:

Les Cargill said...

If the Tea Party echoes anything, it echoes the Know-Nothings from the 19th Century ( so Stoically named because they were expected to say "I Know Nothing" if "captured" ). There's always been a Jackson/Hamilton rift in American politics. When Rick Perry decries the Fed, I hear the ghost of Andrew Jackson.

Of course, the other Bloom - Allan - thought rock and roll was leading to the decline of America, over several chapters of "The Closing of the American Mind".

Maybe the Lit guys should lunch with the History guys once a week...