- The Imaginative Conservative: Rhetorical Education and Citizenship
Liberal Education is a more urgent matter for the average person today than perhaps at any other time in history: he needs the tools to be a critical recipient of the messages constantly bombarding him from the media, able to sort through the mess in a thoughtful manner and deliver an intelligent, persuasive response.Contrast those simple American farmers with the average American voter today: he lives in a culture with no public standards for elevated oral discourse. Public entertainments have no oratorical component. If he goes to church, he probably hears homilies that are either self-help motivational talks or cutesy stories littered with bad jokes (one would be surprised to learn that we have literally hundreds of homiletic manuals and thousands of masterful sermons in the Western tradition!). A toast at a wedding reception or formal party—even a funeral elegy!—is today little more than funny anecdotes poorly strung together. No wonder our politicians talk to us in mentally reductive sound bites.
