My uneducated take is, I like Hazard’s observations and I think his essay is directionally true.
But I agree with your pushback regarding education. It’s hard to believe these big stories like compulsory schooling being a deliberate tool that “the elite” designed to domesticate people, or that schooling makes people unprincipled. It’s understandable that Hazard doesn’t want to argue for every single claim, but he should have presented incriminating evidence to back up this extraordinary theory.
I don’t know much about how well the gold standard worked or how the 1800s justice system worked, but my vague feeling was that the US justice system wasn’t very good during the days of family feuds and race riots.
I do think the democratic system may have worked better, given how the US went through so many presidents without a single president overstaying his term. Today many countries with similar instability to the US have fallen into dictatorship, so it won’t be surprising if the US also does.
My uneducated take is, I like Hazard’s observations and I think his essay is directionally true.
But I agree with your pushback regarding education. It’s hard to believe these big stories like compulsory schooling being a deliberate tool that “the elite” designed to domesticate people, or that schooling makes people unprincipled. It’s understandable that Hazard doesn’t want to argue for every single claim, but he should have presented incriminating evidence to back up this extraordinary theory.
I don’t know much about how well the gold standard worked or how the 1800s justice system worked, but my vague feeling was that the US justice system wasn’t very good during the days of family feuds and race riots.
I do think the democratic system may have worked better, given how the US went through so many presidents without a single president overstaying his term. Today many countries with similar instability to the US have fallen into dictatorship, so it won’t be surprising if the US also does.