(2004-08-02) Lapham City Lights

In looking for some info on Lewis Lapham's latest book, I ran across this topic from his speaking-agent page: A talk that defines any great city (18th century Paris, 19th century London, 20th century New York (NYC)) as the locus of democracy, a synonym for Freedom and an expression of man's humanity to man. For the last twenty years the several factions of the Republican Party right (conservative, evangelical, Neo-Con-servative and Libertarian) have preferred to find the seats of virtue and the thrones of wisdom in the Rural countryside. They vilify the city as the port of entry for all things wicked, foreign and polluted-French cynicism, the AIDS virus, Arab terrorism, German pornography, Peruvian cocaine, etc-that threaten to poison the wells of American innocence. The argument between the Urban and Suburban points of view implicit in this year's presidential election is also the argument between Democracy and Oligarchy, between an open and a closed society (Open Society), between the red states and the blue (Red Vs Blue).