404
PARTISAN REVIEW
Gertrude Himmelfarb:
If these are poor circumstances in which to raise
children, shouldn't we be trying to correct those circumstances? How do
we try to do so, apart from trying to devise policies, social institutions, so–
cial sanctions, and so forth, that will at least for the future correct that
problem?
Stanley Crouch: I
think self-esteem is overrated. Reading the diaries of
distinguished people, we find revealed a lot of insecure people - who
don't think they look good, who are afraid their children don't like them,
that other people don't like them. They're not necessarily confident that
they're doing as well as they should, but they keep working at something.
Audience: I
would like to direct a question both to Professor Himmelfarb
and Mr. Crouch. You both have decried the decline of civil society and
advocated its renaissance. What specific, concrete proposals besides moral
exhortation do you have to put forth, to lay the foundations for the ren–
aissance of the civil society?
Gertrude Himmelfarb:
The most immediate one is to get the heavy hand
of government out of the lives of people, so that they can finally take
charge of their own lives, both as individuals and as communities, and re–
store the kinds of institutional arrangements that people did have before
government played this enormous role. I happen not to be a libertarian; I
think there is a proper role for government.
It
has far exceeded that role
in recent years and has prevented the normal institutions and associations
of people from asserting themselves.
Stanley Crouch: I
think it's a problem that has to be addressed on a num–
ber of fronts. We have for instance this cliched idea, developed in the
media and popular entertainment, that obnoxious behavior is some form
of legitimate individuality on the part of the young. And that one
achieves individuality primarily by rebelling against society during adoles–
cence. I think that's something that came in after World War
II.
It's
fascinating to look at certain films from earlier periods, and see that the
younger people were depicted as people who could become individuals
by affirming what was significant in the society in his or her own way. I
think that we should reiterate that there are remarkably good things in
American life that give enormous latitute to individual interpretation;
these valuable qualties have to do with much more than rebellion, which
has become a commodity.
We forget that in the course of American history, people often as–
pired to things beyond their backgrounds. One of the problems today is
