From: davidedelberg@hotmail.com
To: cecil@chicagoreader.com
Sent: 2/7/2009 1:21:39 P.M. Central Standard Time
Subj: a query
Dear Cecil:
In a very excellent but largely unknown book about Chicago, “The Pig and the Skyscraper,” which apeared in Italian and German before its first English translation, cultural critic Marco D’Eramo comments about how little Chicagoans know of the Pandora’s Box of Hyde Park, better known as the University of Chicago. He attributes much of the world’s misery, our current economic catastrophe and the ‘dumbness’ of Americans in general to U. of C.'s far-reaching influence.
- The whole Neo-Con movement began in the 1950’s with Leo Strauss’ teaching the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and a host of other painful names. The basis of neo-con thought had it that it was best for Americans if we were kept in a permanent state of fear, first using the Russians (“duck and cover”), then later the ‘Arab terrorists.’ 9/11 gave the neo-cons their big opportunity to wage war and control our lives.
- The Chicago School of Economics with its numerous Nobel laureates gave us Milton Friedman, Reaganism, and total economic deregulation. The idea being that if everyone were allowed to be greedy and unregulated, the result would be better for society than if we all took care of one another. D’Eramo mentioned that the U. of C. Economic Department was hired to be the financial advisors to Chile’s right wing dictator General Pinochet.
- The whole concept of “useful” education came from philosopher-educator John Dewey, with U. of C.'s Lab School being a product of those times. Dewey espoused education by electives rather than a fixed academic program. This resulted in today’s parents paying $50K a year for college courses in Romance Fiction, Shadow Puppets and the Philosophy of George Lucas.
- And, oh yes, the atomic bomb.
Cecil, is all this just some more anti American bullshit from another disaffected European or did we really have all those scary people in Hyde Park?
David Edelberg