Over my lifetime we have gone from one voice to two. We can now hear a Second Voice.
In America and in most of the world, there was only one cohesive intellectual position for the past 150 years: the Left. The alternative was some version of status quoism or anti-Leftism. The Left was the only message of the academic world and the news media, worldwide.
Slowly, over the past fifty years, a few meaningful
and constructive voices have been raised. I would start with Joseph
Schumpeter, move to Sidney Hook and by the 1980s I began to hear more
and more iconoclastic, original and powerful voices.
Today, there are many dozens of clear voices, making up the great new Second Voice. A young person today, unlike a young person in my day, can read on the Internet countless voices of reason that help understand democracy, the free market, commerce, the positive value of the status quo, the greatness of America, the relevance of relativism and most importantly the power of decentralization. Such a young person can create his/her own world view with depth, perspective, informed insight and vast bodies of empirical evidence to support it.
It is truly a miracle that I lived long enough to sit down with The Weekly Standard, Commentary, Azure and the Claremont Review of Books. And to go online to Contentions and Bookworm.