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4.5
These essays take a clearly written, detailed and only occasionally overstated look at the state of our culture and our institutions. David Hart's essay on religion in America is the most cogent as he argues that a certain Dionysian form of Christian relgious fervor is holding sway over the country as liberal religion recedes. Robert Bork's essay on the imperial judiciary, which has ignored the Constitution to form judgments based on the thinking of the elite, is well written and exciting as well. Essays on architecture and poetry are better at showing us what isn't up to snuff rather than what should be happening (I rather like ornament in architecture, even if it's done ironically), and Mark Steyn's Jeremiad on the U.S. educational system, while true to a point, probably overstates the crisis in the classrooms. Finally, Hilton Kramer's summary of modernism is helpful for the lay reader seeking enlightenment of art, but as in his other work his attempts to draw a clear line between modernism and postmodernism, other than one is sincere and one isn't, just doesn't work. I, an uninformed reader, just can't see the difference between splatter and maggoty meat, although I admit that lots of excellent art has been brought forth over the last 50 years. These essays, however, make for engrossing reading, particularly the essay on military strategy, which attacks the Bush-Rumsfeld Defense Department, appropriately, from the right.
