Disappointed but Not Resigned

"The young are honorable and see the problems," Paul Goodman wrote in 1968, "but they don't know anything because we have not taught them anything." Michael Brown's wise and eloquent essay proves him wrong. The young know quite a lot, but their elders (including the very students Goodman described) have deprived them of a sturdy tradition of social criticism that should be their birthright. The tradition of Thoreau, James, Veblen, Addams, Dewey, Bourne, and Mumford that Goodman kept alive in the postwar years has apparently become an embarrassment to those aspiring to "global citizenship" and a "post-national" consciousness: its masterworks barely figure in humanities courses. As a result, young Americans find themselves exiled from their country's moral narrative. "Tradition has been broken," Goodman wrote fifty years ago, "and yet there is no standard to affirm. Culture becomes eclectic, sensational, or phony." With luck, Jonathan Lee's forthcoming film Paul Goodman Changed My Life will lead viewers back to Goodman's work and that of the critics who inspired him. The new editions of several of his books brought out by PM Press are a good place to start.