Reading and writing should have taught the people more than name-calling and how to manipulate opinion.
The spread of literacy, said William Hazlitt, should have taught us judgment and taste. Instead, it has taught us how to heap hurtful abuse on anyone who makes us feel challenged or humbled. Critics lavish praise on writers who sneer with them in all the right places, and then suddenly destroy them in the most public fashion — and the reading public laps it up.
Posted January 13
Jigsaws: Join this group of ideas together to make a single sentence, in as many ways as you can. See if you can include any of the words in square brackets.
Public debate was low in quality. Hazlitt hoped more literacy would raise it. He was disappointed. [Fail. Talk. Write.]
Picture: By Clara Taggart MacChesney (1860-1928), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.. Source.
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