. . . Americans Are The Best

America Was Founded By Intellectuals, A Rare Occurrence In The History Of Modern Nations We Might Even Say That America Was Founded By Intellectuals, From Which It Has Taken Us Two Centuries And A Communications Revolution To Recover.

The Spectacle We Find In True Religions Has As Its Purpose Enchantment, Not Entertainment. The Distinction Is Critical. By Endowing Things With Magic, Enchantment Is A Means Through Which We May Gain Access To Sacredness. Entertainment Is The Means Through Which We Distance Ourselves From It.

People Like Ourselves May See Nothing Wondrous In Writing, But Our Anthropologists Know How Strange And Magical It Appears To A Purely Oral People - A Conversation With No One And Yet With Everyone. What Could Be Stranger Than The Silence One Encounters When Addressing A Question To A Text? What Could Be More Metaphysically Puzzling Than Addressing An Unseen Audience, As Every Writer Of Books Must Do? And Correcting Oneself Because One Knows That An Unknown Reader Will Disapprove Or Misunderstand?

An Educated Mind Is Practiced In The Uses Of Reason, Which Inevitably Leads To A Skeptical Outlook.

Television Is Our Culture's Principal Mode Of Knowing About Itself. Therefore -- And This Is The Critical Point -- How Television Stages The World Becomes The Model For How The World Is Properly To Be Staged. It Is Not Merely That On The Television Screen Entertainment Is The Metaphor For All Discourse. It Is That Off The Screen The Same Metaphor Prevails. (92)