From the Spiked Review of Books: Re-opening the American mind

http://www.spiked-online.com/site/reviewofbooks_article/12590/

Re-opening the American mind
Twenty-five years on, a re-read of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind reveals just how wrong liberals were to hate it, and how wrong conservatives were to claim it as their ideological bible.
by Sean Collins




"‘The first shot in the culture wars’ was fired 25 years ago, with the publication of Allan Bloom’s landmark book, The Closing of the American Mind. That was Camille Paglia’s apt description, and the reverberations of Bloom’s shot can still be felt today. The ‘war’ over culture has seen flare-ups and ceasefires since the 1980s, but the basic idea behind it – that liberals and conservatives are defined by deeply opposed values, not just different political ideas – remains an important way in which American politics is understood."