Arthur Schlesinger
Dr. Arthur Schlesinger has died.
News reports are lauding Dr. Schlesinger as the standard-bearer of American liberalism. I’m reserving this honor entirely for a Canadian… Dr. John Kenneth Galbraith. But I’d be a fool not to understand the sentiment, or to say that his life (as architect of the Clinton era) never influenced mine. Dr. Schlesinger spoke to the Indiana University undergraduate assembly in the Fall of 1999, organized by the honors college for which I was an officer. I was in the audience. I can’t recall the details of his talk, but the tone was clear - our generation needs to reshape the institutions we inherited. Here, here. This addendum from CNN’s canned obit:
“In his last decades, Schlesinger became more pessimistic about the country’s future. He broke with liberal intellectuals and became one of the fiercest critics of multiculturalism, a trend which he felt has the potential to rip the country apart. He also attacked the “imperial presidency,” a phrase he coined to describe the Nixon administration, of George W. Bush.”
I remember you, Dr. Schlesinger. I greatly admired you. And I was very sorry to see you go.
News reports are lauding Dr. Schlesinger as the standard-bearer of American liberalism. I’m reserving this honor entirely for a Canadian… Dr. John Kenneth Galbraith. But I’d be a fool not to understand the sentiment, or to say that his life (as architect of the Clinton era) never influenced mine. Dr. Schlesinger spoke to the Indiana University undergraduate assembly in the Fall of 1999, organized by the honors college for which I was an officer. I was in the audience. I can’t recall the details of his talk, but the tone was clear - our generation needs to reshape the institutions we inherited. Here, here. This addendum from CNN’s canned obit:
“In his last decades, Schlesinger became more pessimistic about the country’s future. He broke with liberal intellectuals and became one of the fiercest critics of multiculturalism, a trend which he felt has the potential to rip the country apart. He also attacked the “imperial presidency,” a phrase he coined to describe the Nixon administration, of George W. Bush.”
I remember you, Dr. Schlesinger. I greatly admired you. And I was very sorry to see you go.