Overview

No society collapses because of a single villain. It falls when enough people, over enough time, learn to tolerate the intolerable. Open Systems, Closed Minds confronts the contradictions of modern society from the perspective of someone who has watched one democracy collapse and learned how easily another can grow careless. Ranging across politics, exile, nationalism, religion, science, music, and public life, these essays ask difficult questions without hiding behind slogans. Why should genuine free-market advocates support universal healthcare? How does the accident of birthplace become toxic nationalism? When did the language of liberty become a vehicle for moral and religious conformity? From Norman Borlaug, who helped save a billion lives from hunger, to Rafael de Nogales Méndez, who recorded the Armenian genocide from inside the Ottoman ranks, to the irreducible joy of an Etta James record, this collection moves between warning and admiration, public failure and human achievement. Clear-eyed and unsparing, Open Systems, Closed Minds is not a counsel of despair. It is a defense of the open mind against dogma, apathy, and the habits that make free societies easier to lose than people imagine.

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