Another famous seer said that "a prophet is not without honor save in his own country." Jacques Barzun (age 104) has joined those, like Richard Weaver, who "fought the good fight" and made a splash and told the truth even though the tides had already turned.

This is what the NY Times said about him this morning.

"But at the same time, he (Barzun) said, Western civilization had also cultivated the seeds of its undoing by envying what it renounced and succumbing to the lure of rebellion. Its virtues and failings, he argued, were in some respects identical: the freedom to rebel could turn into sweeping nihilism, resulting in decadence. He saw that happening." [url=" http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/arts/jacques-barzun-historian-and-scholar-dies-at-104.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121026" ](NYTimes, 26 Oct 2012)[/url]

That's pretty accurate. Barzun, whom I have quoted before in these pages, saw that the cultural decline presently sweeping the Western World, the devaluation of life, the cynical disregard of reasoned principles as the basis of ethics, the elevation of sensual-ism and the anarchic trends toward autonomous individualism, had so permeated our cultural institutions that only a dramatic and even revolutionary alternative could offer some hope for the future generations. Along with folks like Allen Bloom, Mortimer Adler, Robert Bellah, and Neil Postman (all of whom are politically far removed from my own views), Barzun clearly saw that one cannot divorce "character" from "education." The dualism that infests our culture seeks to divorce "soul" from "body", "knowledge" from "belief", and "fact" from "interpretation." Against the cynical foes of "certainty", these men proclaimed that without "certainty" civilization collapses into mere self-indulgence as the truth that "when there is nothing worth dying for, then there is also nothing worth living for" produces its inevitable effect. The power of conviction, zeal for principle and the possibility of true debate whoosh out of the cultural synthesis like helium out of punctured balloon.

The solution they sought was for the re-institution of the 'academy.' Barzun's Begin Here makes timeless reading. Even though our ultimate visions diverge is very important particulars, he was a man after my own heart. Rest in peace Dr. Barzun... you fought well.