Book Returns
The Path Less Beaten
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road
by Stephen H. Webb
One of the casualties of the attack on the Vietnam War was the bourgeois ideal of moderation. Before the sixties, entry into the middle class required a disciplining of desire on behalf of family, church, and nation. When political radicals began persuading America’s youth that it took more courage to evade the draft than to serve their country, they substituted the ideal of self-fulfillment—“self-actualization” in the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s more altruistic sounding words—for self-sacrifice. Moderation was out. Excess was in.
The pleasure of middle-class life is found in its respect for limits. The days are short, one has duties and responsibilities and a place in the world, and goals must be set and accomplished. Sixties radicals saw this conformity as the source of every social ill, from nationalism to sexism. They believed that the pursuit of personal freedom could transform society. They hoped they could end the Vietnam War by undermining the bourgeois ideal of moderation.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Stephen H. Webb is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Wabash College. His latest book is The Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound(Brazos Press). He, his wife, and their three children are members of the Lutheran Church (ELCA).
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
32.6—November/December 2019
An Open Letter to Christian Readers of Jordan Peterson & Roger Scruton by James Bryson
32.2—March/April 2019
Flight from the Absolute: Cynical Observations on the Postmodern West, Volume II by Paul Gosselin by Louis Markos
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
