Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West

by R.R. Reno

The traumas of 1914–1945 explain this consensus. The entire cultural establishment wanted to forestall the development of the authoritarian personality. There was an emphasis on authority in the initial stages of the postwar era, true, but not strongly imposed and always open to experimentation. Convinced that a free society requires a foundation in the Western tradition, Robert Maynard Hutchins, the famous president of the University of Chicago, launched an ambitious Great Books project for a mass audience. Yet he too tilted against authority, even as he commended authoritative texts. “The [great] books should speak for themselves,” he wrote, “and the reader should decide for himself.” Tradition, yes, but the free individual has the final say. “The task of interpretation and conclusion is his. This is the machinery and life of the Western tradition in the hands of free men.”8