Okay, several comments need to be made here so as to clarify some
points Holt has made, the first of which is that the thesis, that the
university system is actively creating bad citizens, is highlighted by
not only my own experiences but by those of an enormous amount of
classical authors and is to me a serious threat which when not taken
seriously can lead to disasters; it is, to me, not a long logical
leap from rewarding kids who are B- performers through high school
into average universities and handing them degrees to rewarding
bankers with $100M bonuses for B- or C+ performance, which is, in
turn, clearly a problem.

Second, my reading list included, at time of publication, the following, most of which any liberal should recognize as left-leaning:

Heilbroner, Robert L.-The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and
Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (economic founders-Smith,
Malthus, Ricardo, Veblen, Mill, Marx, Keynes, etc.), covering several liberal economists

Hall, Donald E.-Subjectivity, which was an awful, factually inaccurate, pointless read imposed upon me by an overly liberal instructor

Diamond, Jared-Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or to Succeed
(environment and sustenance), clearly a liberal take on a liberal issue and one with which I found myself in agreement

Colodny, Len and Tom Shachtman-The Forty Years War
(emphasis-neoconservative), which is a highly critical look at the
Neoconservative movement and is NOT conservative

Branch, Taylor-The Clinton Tapes (politics; history), clearly liberal and a fascinating book that left me favorably impressed with Clinton

Stiglitz, Joseph E.-Freefall (economics-neo-Keynesian), likewise clearly liberal but overly whiney and not worth its price in paper

Skidelsky, Robert-Keynes: The Return of the Master (economic
philosophy), likewise clearly liberal

Senge, Peter—The Necessary Revolution (sustainability), likewise

Levitt, Steven and Stephen Dubner-Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics
(economics-unintended consequences), likewise and again fascinating and difficult to disagree with

Morris, Edmund-Theodore Rex (biography-Theodore Roosevelt-American
president; focus-1901-1909), which in essence turned TR into a liberal

John Dewey-Democracy and Education, excerpts from How We Think (philosophy-education, society,
psychology, and politics), written by a socialist

George Orwell-1984, Animal Farm, Politics and the English Language (novel-political philosophy; Orwell is
complete in scope), likewise and 1984 happens to be one of my favorite novels

John Stuart Mill-“On Liberty,” “On Representative Government,”
Utilitarianism (political philosophy), one of the intellectual spines
of the modern Liberal movement

Jean-Jacques Rousseau-Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Discourse
on Political Economy, The Social Contract, A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe (political philosophy),
likewise, with the first of these admitting openly its disregard for fact and then copying straight from Lucretius

Nor are Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capialism), Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Thoreau, Emerson, Twain, Nietzsche, or Francis Fukuyama conservative, all of whom are on my list in one place or another and in a few cases in several places.

Etc.

I don't list books as "liberal" because I think it a bad label that doesn't tell one anything, and because, as is well-known, the liberal political area is occupied by many disjointed movements which are better described by their own names (environmentalists, Keynesian economists, GBLT rights, women's rights, minority/social equality, pacifists, socialists, communists, anarchists, etc.).

I disagree, heavily, with the liberal movement, and in fact find it a very dangerous one because it can justify anything and will listen to no one, and always blames the problems it creates on other people (especially those hardest hit) and their reactions. That does not mean
that I have not considered its merits, and it does not mean that my
opinion is worthless or ill-considered. It does mean that I have my
own beliefs which include that black and women authors have not
contributed anywhere near the kinds of works that constitute the Great
Books (which I say openly in the book and which is not noted in the
other review, and of which I read Marquez, Achebe, Paton, Baldwin, Kushner, and
various others prior to the 2008 start of the list) or even secondary great works, and which are agreed to be such by far
more than me. Moreover, the Greeks are a non-white culture despite their impact on later white societies (they are in fact Near Eastern), and I do list Sun-Tzu (who is not applicable to business), The Bhagavad Gita, Gilgamesh, Virginia Woolf, etc. I am also not sure what African authors from the Roman Empire, for instance, add up--probably none as they relied on oral tradition--and instead of therefore discarding all Roman history and thought, possibly the most important period in world history, I gladly study Tacitus, Plutarch, Livy, Augustine, VIrgil, Ovid, Lucretius, Epictetus, and Seneca, who have an incredibly diverse array of viewpoints and are by no means monolithic "white males." If they were--and who knows with Augustine?--they were only so incidentally, and the content of their thought does not, in any way, revolve solely on that coincidence. I judge books on merit, not on the race or minority status of their authors.

I have a major problem with the fact that the factual content of my book was misrepresented so grossly by a reviewer, even if they disagree with my argument and approach, and while I apologize for the length of this, I also owe it to those who care to make sure the truth is told. But of course that is only because the fact base and the logic of the book are more or less incontrovertible, so one must therefore resort to such intellectually (and morally) unethical approaches in order to "refute" it. That does not justify such behavior.

It is not me who suffers from a lack of an open mind. I ask, however, that those who do refrain from reading and commenting on my books. ( )

The Bubble Boys: How Mistaken Educational Ideals and Practices Are Causing a Warped Social Fabric by Jason R. Goetz is one student's take on the shortcomings of the current higher education system in the U.S. and what can be done to improve them. In Goetz's opinion, a return to the classics in English and Social Studies curriculums is central to a more well-rounded scholarship.

The main problem with Goetz's assessment is that it is based on his personal experiences rather than any kind of comprehensive survey. (While he spent time at three different universities, they were all within the California state-sponsored system.) He mentions casually once that many of his friends had similar experiences to his own, but never cites their stories as evidence again. In fact, much of what he cites as universal runs directly contrary to my own education. (For example, he states that primary sources in social studies classes are actively discouraged for anyone beneath a graduate education level while in my public high school they were routinely required.) Goetz uses the fact that because his difficulties with professors and class content repeated themselves across multiple classes and schools as evidence that the educational system is the problem rather than a specific educator or institution. What he fails to acknowledge is that the other common factor in all his evidence is his own actions and reactions. As a casual read, the specific points of this manifesto are largely unmemorable, due mainly to the unnecessarily dense prose which seems more concerned with vocabulary than clarity.

Goetz seems to have made up his mind about what material is worth digesting as part of his education and is not allowing anyone to change it. He recounts his problem in high school with requirements to read works by female and racially- or ethnically-minority writers due to his opinion that a good work by a white male should represent a universal life experience which negates the necessity of the minority perspective. Indeed, the list of over 250 "Great Books" and "Great American Literature" works Goetz has personally read since June 2008 reveals only one written by a woman and three written by non-white males. His "Politics and Current Affairs" reading shows six volumes he has labelled as "conservative" or "neoconservative" (or which label themselves such in the title) and none with any sort of liberal or leftist label. (He does refer to Thomas Paine's work as "radical pro-revolutionary," but that is hardly the same as a contemporary liberal work.) Goetz reading list is a graphic illustration of the confirmation bias present in the arguments throughout his book: An immediate resolve that anyone who disagrees with his preconceived notions is not a differing opinion, but Part of the Problem, leading him to close his mind to whatever new points of view they might be able to show him. ( )