Word: lipset
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Gentlemen & Scholars. If U.S. intellectuals ever had a right to feel oppressed, says Lipset, it was in the late 19th century, when Henry Adams eloquently brooded over the rise of the so-called "robber barons." The anti-intellectualism of that day was the cold contempt of unlettered men (whose scions later gave millions to universities). The result-since the U.S. lacked a conservative tradition -was to fill intellectuals, from Wilson through Roosevelt, with liberal reformist zeal. But the anti-intellectualism of today is no longer contempt for a low-status group. It is more likely fear of a high-status...
...Lipset sees evidence that "a significant minority [of U.S. intellectuals] have become conservative." One reason is continued prosperity, another the implacable nature of Communism, which encourages intellectuals "to defend an existing or past society against those who argue for a future Utopia. Like Burke, they have come to look for sources of stability. Only time will tell whether a permanent change in the relationship of the American intellectual to his society is in process. There will still remain the inherent tendencies to oppose the status quo. Any status quo embodies rigidities and dogmatisms which intellectuals have an inalienable right...
Many observers hold two related theories about U.S. religion: it is 1) booming, and 2) growing progressively more secular. Sociologist Seymour M. Lipset of the University of California disagrees. While church membership has clearly risen in recent years, Lipset reports in the Columbia University quarterly Forum, there is "no basic trend" in churchgoing: it was 41% of the adult population in an average week of 1939, only 39% in 1950, and 47% in 1957. Other statistics...
...secularization or dilution of supernatural belief, Sociologist Lipset notes that evangelical religions are now stronger (about 10 million members) than at any other time in this century, and are actually responsible for much of the growth in church membership. His conclusion: "By far the most striking aspect of religious life in America is not the changes which have occurred in it-but the basic continuities it retains...