Ft hies andthe Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership
Baltzell, E. Digby
BOOKS IN REVIEW - "Ft hies andthe Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership" He is best when true to his original role as a spy in rich man's land. The most seriously provocative of his notions here is that an American courtly society, fundamentally hostile to the...
...They could-read almost as fast as they could think...
...and Nicky, the product of his second marriage, who has given up his ambition of becoming a concert pianist in favor of wandering with a tape recorder in the back country of India, there to be a music ethnographer...
...Print your new address and mall this form to The American Spectator...
...But it was anything but acceptable when Bahzell's writing began in the 1950s...
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...Among Ez's other children, two despise him: Jonathan, his oldest, whom Ez abandoned at the death of the child's mother...
...He even takes young Merry with him on some of his philandering junkets with Paula, who is Ez's lover while he is married to his second wife, Isobel...
...Johnson's one extralegal, extrafamilial passion was art, and he built, in the style of the rich then, a fine collection...
...771 Peyment enclosed [~ Please bill me THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1980 33...
...I)o VOtl mentally pronot, nce each word as ,,'ot~ read" DO you frequently have to go back and reread words or whole paragraph, you iu'.t finished-reading...
...Miss Kaplan writes about Ez and his large family--over his 64 years he has had three wives, a lover, and six children, four of them legitimate--in a series of fragments and vignettes, primarily triggered by the mental associations of his oldest daughter, Merry, when she learns of Ez's death Tod Lindberg is a student at the University of Chicago...
...In a succession of arresting chapters on wealth, education, leadership in government and society, law, medicine, theology, and other institutional spheres, Baltzell shows us that from the very beginning, and extending through many decades down to the present, Boston's Puritan matrix has served the nation better on the whole than has Philadelphia's antinomian, Quaker roots...
...You must be delighted with what you see or you pay nothing...
...the other is John Graver Johnson, one of the most notable of Philadelphia's nationally renowned line of lawyers...
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...JohannaKaplan / Harper& Row / $10.95 Tod Lindberg Johanna Kaplan's first novel, O My America/, is about Ez Slavin, an "iconoclastic social critic" (according to the headline of his New York Times obituary) and a founding father and leading figure of the counterculture...
...O MY AMERICA...
...Don't they serve who only stand and wait...
...Today, even in the innermost precincts of sociology and political science it has become acceptable--well, almost acceptable--to question the virtues 6f all-out egalitarianism and to say a good word occasionally about social class and elites...
...I have had a lifelong affair with the idea of America," Ez says at one point in his life, a remark for which he becomes quite well-known...
...Probably derived from Karl Marx, Ez's "idea" also seems to feature a sort of communistic egalitarianism and a strong sense of anti-materialism...
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...Must it always be, as the Duke asked Edward Gibbon upon receiving a copy of the first volume of The Decline and Fall, scribble, scribble, scribble...
...From the beginning, Bahzell has had his eye on what many would regard as the central problem today in America, indeed, in the entire Western world: the problem of authority in a social order that has been wracked and tormented by the for~es of modernity, however benign many of these may be intrinsically to the ends of freedom and democracy...
...A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid") is filled with those who, unable to sit or stand, must always be doing something, a trait that, as Pascal observed, accounts for much of the evil as well as the good in the world...
...No social or economic objectives were present in either incident, merely the WHAT'S THAN SPEEI (SPEEDPLUS COMPREHENSION) Speed Learning is replacing speed reading because it's easy to learn.., lasts a lifetime.., applies to everything you read . . . and is the only fully accredited course with the option of college credits...
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...I asked myself then as I have done many times since...
...Johnson, of 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1980 humble origins, rose and married into a class, Philadelphia Gentlemen lawyers, that has always chosen private success rather than public leadership...
...At one point, he tells Merry of his feelings toward his son, Nicky: " 'All right, so I'm deficient as a father, I admit it...
...Aristocracies, in contrast to plutocracies, are led by a class whose authority is recognized by all, which lessens the need for the protection of pure wealth...
...When writing to us about your 8ubscriptlon, elw:.ys attach your addr~ label or print your name and address exactly as they appear on your address label...
...The splendid thing about Baltzell's work is that it has never been rooted in the false idols of egalitarianism...
...5pct'd l.eanm;y, gives you w~at speed rt'adil~tg can't...
...No doubt I ask too much of him, but as a general rule I'd like to see less of the sage and more of the rascal in Lapham, less homage to Hotchkiss, Yale, and Cambridge, and more attention to the ratty little secrets of the streets and the staterooms which he seems capable of understanding...
...Otherwise it would still be bringing me down...
...The result, though, was the best book yet written on...
...He holds that one may work inside or outside of the law in order to change the law, the important thing being that one work...
...In The Robert Nisbet is Albert Schwettzer Professor Emeritus at Columbta University and Resident Scholar .at the American Enterprise Institute...
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...If vou answer "yes" to any of the'.e questions - - then hem at last is the practical help you've been waiting for...
...B ahzell makes his point brilliantly in a single contrast: that between two lawyers, one Bostonian, the other Philadelphian, born within a month of each other in 1841...
...Only in art and architecture has Philadelphia made its mark...
...I am...
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...All three men were friends and members of the class of 1825...
...Russell Stauffer at the University of Delaware...
...the literary tradition was bred into him...
...The most seriously provocative of his notions here is that an American courtly society, fundamentally hostile to the tenets of democracy, has begun to entrench itself...
...In any way.'" But it is Ez's political slant that draws most of our attention...
...As long as WASP norms and values contained the greater part of American literary and scientific creativity, of political leadership, and of social and economic enterprise, WASP ascendancy worked to the lasting benefit of American civilization...
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...Holmes was arrogant and vain, with all the vices of aristocracy...
...fiolmes was only comfortable...
...But these are curmudgeonly muttering s Not in many years has there appeared a sociological history as deeply researched, imaginatively constructed, and superbly written as Pun'tan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia...
...If, at the end of that time you are not convinced that you would like to master Speed Learning, simply return the program and owe nothing...
...The sixties' turbulence and its cultural and political antecedents serve as the principal backdrop for the novel, and in the characters ofEz Slavin and his relatives, students, and sycop h a n t s , Miss Kaplan examines the political and cultural forces that played themselves out in the rise of the counterculture...
...Johnson died a Wealthy man...
...I f there is a slight fault in this masterful study it lies perhaps in Baltzell's overweening emphasis upon doing and giving, especially in the political sphere broadly defined...
...This holds for their respective cultures, types of class-authority, patterns of leadership, and represLentative individual characters...
...And, according to Baltzell, at least one other difference between these men may be explained by the cultural traditions each came to typify: The members of the upper classes in egalitarian societies [such as Philadelphia's, by root] that lack a clear hierarchy of values recognized by all classes tend to avoid position of authority and to protect themselves from the masses by a high wall of wealth...
...Whatever else this antinomianism was, the flouting of authority was its essence...
...Merry is a social journalist of the standard sixties variety, chronicling in the course of her work "the sudden upsurge of Eastern mysticalreligious groups" in New York, among other things...
...Executives, s t u d e n t s , professional ',eople, men and women in all walks of ire from 15 to 70 have benefited from this program...
...the American upper class...
...He is genuinely sensitive t o the various corruptions of freedom practiced by free men...
...What began, continued...
...Moreover, his literary-juristic eminence crossed both oceans...
...In addition to the sociological and historical skills he brings to his work--skills developed in the researching and writing of two earlier studies of American upper classes and elites, Philadelphia Gentleman and The Protestant Establishment-he brings also the kind of knowledge of subject that is the result exclusively of belonging to what he writes about...
...In The Protestant Establishment he wrote: Following Tocqueville's classic analysis of the decline of authority in France, I THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1980 31 have tried to show that an authoritative leadership structure will evolve in this country only when and if a new and representative upper class and establishment are created, whose members will then be able to discriminate on the basis of the distinguished accomplishments of individuals rather than classifying men ~ategorically on the basis of their ethnic or racial origins...
...In just a few spare minutes a dav of easy reading and exciting listening, you discover an entirely new way to read and think - - a radical departure from an,,,EARN COLLEGE & CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS FOR SPEED LEARNING COLLEGE CREDITS You Jrl~iy ~ t l l l n 2 f u l l ~ r hour c ~ l t ' $ for ~_~ cOUtl~ COmlMetlon, wherever you retlde Crt.~htl offered thr0~J~ Whltlrer Co41egB (Cahlorn,el Details if~luded i~ your pcogr#m PROF EcClONAL SOCIETIES Learning i$ offere~ mternlhOnllly to mernbqr$ of ptofe~s~oh81 ~lOClltl0n$ ~JCh Is AmMlean ChemlGpl Society...
...Ez's illegitimate daughter Ffrenchy Meisel loves him dearly, though...
...Boston may very well have produced more famous architects on the national scene down through the years, but Philadelphia architecture today is by all odds the most exquisite and richly varied in the nation...
...No three individuals of comparable stature, I thought as I looked at the fine portraits, had ever graduated from the college at my own university or from any other college in the state of Pennsylvania...
...His answer to the last was, like Tocqueville's on the Old Regime in France, the loss of authority...
...Even at the beginning, or certainly by 1800, all of these differences between the two cities' cultures were apparent: "Class authority and deference democracy were hegemonic values in Massachusetts, as they had been since the colony's founding . . . . In contrast, class authority and deference democracy were rarely since the beginning, and almost never after 1800 hegemonic values in the colony and commonwealth of Pennsylvania...
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...In Philadelphia Gentleman, Baltzell demonstrated an enviable capacity to write with objectivity about Proper Philadelphians, which must have been mildly upsetting, vo say the least, *o some of those who found themselves case studies and statistics in his book...
...The typical remark made bv the 75,000 slow "readers who complected the Speed Learning Proy, ram was: "Why d i d n ' t someone teach me this a long time ago...
...Johnson wrote nothing, very much in the tradition of Quaker Philadelphia, and he neither sought nor accepted public office or, for that matter, even discussed public questions...
...thing you have ever seen or heard about...
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...In Philadelphia "Catholics have been largely content to cultivate their own garden" whereas in Boston they "have been busy cultivating voters of all faiths in their city, their state and their nation...
...That is, Baltzell took care to be born a Proper Philadelphian, thoroughly at home from the beginning in Philadelphia's upper crust and able to make his way naturally to Boston's, needing thereafter only.the acquisition of the tools and strategies of professional sociological research...
...In contrast, Johnson was democratic and humble, his office filled with clients, rich and poor...
...please print) Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . City ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Z i p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Date of change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X91 Pl~Se renew my $ubScriptlon for one year (twelve issues~$12...
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...Not mine at all...
...Holmes, Baltzell writes, was driven by the spur of fame, whereas Johnson was satisfied by success...
...All those down art school vibes...
...Ez is a lousy father and an unfaithful husband...
...They were no longer held back bv the lack of skills and poor reading h~lbits...
...And behind this contrast lie many others: Holmes was born into a family and class of leaders with a tradition of authority...
...111ovenlellt (St}b of t h t ' problem) and ignore the mo~,t important part (q5%) thinkif;~ In bnet...
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...Holmes wrote all his life for posterity...
...And I am sure it will play as well in Peoria as in Boston and Philadelphia...
...Eom such reflections more than ten years ago this study began to take form, to be built on a contrast that, although perceptible to Baltzell from boyhood on, had come all of a sudden to seem of crucial importance to any understanding of American character: the contrast between the American values and incentives derived from Puritan Boston and those derived from Quaker Philadelphia...
...IMPORTANT: Allow 8ix weeks for addresll change...
...And that was two months a g o ! ' " - - a n d has herself given birth to an illegitimate daughter, Mountain Spring Meisel...
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...But when new ethnic and religious elements entered the mainstream of American history, offering fresh creativity and enterprise, and when the Protestant Establishment refused, through all the means establishments have, to allow any of these new, fresh movers and shakers into its ranks, its day became twilight...
...Yet most t;I today's speed reading programs spend their time teachu'tg you rapid eve...
...The first is Oliver Wendell Holmes...
...Ez, whose intellectual mentors include the transcendentalist radical Thoreau, has shaped his "idea of America" to include elements of Thoreau's pacifism and his doctrine of civil disobedience...
...Holmes was little concerned w~th the visual, a common trait of the very intellectual...
...Research shows that reading ix t~5% ttzinkin k, and only 5% eve movement...
...I mean to take nothing away from Baltzell in his pride of genealogical and political ancestry or in his firmly stated hope for the future of his native heath when I say that, by the author's lights, Boston wins overwhelmingly in the comparison between the two cities...
...The comparison of the Quaker ethic with the Puritan ethic of Boston first became vivid to Bahzell when, on a visit to Bowdoin College, he was confronted by life-size portraits of Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce...
...Do you have too much to ,'cad and too little time to read it...
...Times and many others, make the program stimulating, easy and fun . . . and so much more effective...
...God knows, Massachusetts history, beginning with the presumptuous Pilgrims ("ye are the light of the world...
...And anyhow, Jonathan Edwards and Oliver Wendell Holmes notwithstanding, which state must carry the dreadful burden of the Kennedy family, whose greatest contribution to the Commonwealth would have been simply remaining behind a good saloon bar...
...That the first is a household name and the second unknown save to jurist-antiquarians in Philadelphia is at the heart of Baltzell's thesis...
...This fundamental philosophy underlies Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, which was born to a considerable degree of its author's troubled reflections on the "antinomianism" that was breaking out all over the academic and intellectual scene in the late 1960s, trashing ages-old intellectual values and standards, and wiping out the best as well as the worst of academic leaders...
...And true to form for an "idea" that is essentially moral--it might more accurately be called a vision--Ez's idea denies the legitimacy of any authority, political or otherwise, that does not embrace i t By his own admission, Ez is more an anarchist than anything else, and, not surprisingly, his "idea of AmeriPle~we attach the address label from the most recent Issue of your Amerlcan Spectator in the space below...
...I lear'n desire to destroy rank, convention, propriety--all forms of authority...
...Speed Learning is a fully accredited course . . . costing only 1/5 the price of less effective speed reading classr(x)m courses...
...Interesting items taken from Time Magazine, Business Week, Wall Street Journal, Family Circle, N.Y...
...It occurred to Baltzell that at bottom the student who called the president of an ancient university a "motherf----r" to his face, and with the apparent approval of the student's parents and others present, was behaving no differently than William Penn had when he kept his hat on in the presence of Charles II...
...He made it evident from the beginning that while the old upper class had lost or squandered its rights of authority in America, some system of upper class authority was indispensable to a free and creative society...
...But I just--Oh, look, Merry, he's always seemed like Isobel's child to me--Not mine...
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...It also happens that Ez had begun to sleep with ..~obel even before the death of Pearl, his first wife...
...Thus in the life of the mind, the author demonstrates, the powerful intellectual influence upon America of Bostonian culture, from Cotton Mather to Henry Adams, has no counterpart in Philadelphia, which yielded "only a privileged caste that has never given tone to the ideas of either the state of Pennsylvania or the nation" Much the same contrast is seen in the position and activities of Roman Catholics in the two cultures...
...Merry is the only one of Ez's children he has ever treated fairly...
...PURITAN BOSTON AND QUAKER PHILADELPHIA: TWO PROTESTANT ETHICS AND THE SPIRIT OF CLASS AUTHORITY AND LEADERSHIP E. Digby Baltzell./ The Free Press / $19.95 Robert Nisbet I t is safe to say that no other living social scientist or historian is as qualified to write this important and fascinating book as E. Digby Baltzell...
...Isn't there something to be said for an Order of the Garter where, as one of its members exulted, there is no damn nonsense about merit...
...Do vou ha,.e trouble concentrating ~ Do vou quickly forget most of what you re,~d...
...in i972...
...a true product of the sixties, she has dropped out of the Rhode Island School of Design--" 'I like totally wiped it out of my head, you know...
...Protestant Establishment he showed how the old WASP aristocracy in this country came into existence, bow it prospered and left its mark on American society, and how and why it fell into decay...
Vol. 13 • May 1980 • No. 5
