cultural iconoclasm and to the overthrow of the beliefs, values, and behaviors of the past—that attitude C. S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery” raised to the level of a basic cultural instinct. Whereas in the first and second worlds, intellectuals and institutions such as universities were the conduits for the transmission and preservation of culture, now the intellectual class is devoted to the opposite—to the subversion, destabilization, and destruction of the culture’s traditions. In fact, so radical and disruptive is this phenomenon that Rieff argues that what these third-world elites
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