Fryeday

 

“We have outside us nations with different political philosophies, and we think of them as dangers, or even as enemies. But our more dangerous enemies, so far. are within. I spoke a moment ago of the difference between a mob and a democratic society. Our effective enemies are not foreign propagandists, but the hucksters and hidden persuaders and segregators and censors and hysterical witch-hunters and all the rest of the black guard who can only live as parasites on a gullible and misinformed mob. Yet the only real permanent way to turn society into a mob is to debase the arts: to turn literature into slanted news, painting into billboard advertising, music into caterwauling transistor sets, architecture into mean streets.”

From Academy Without Walls in ‘On Education’ by Northrop Frye