Doug Henwood is not the first to observe  that the American empire has entered a decadent phase.  He is, however, among the few to focus his attention on how the “social rot produced by market-regulated societies, from the macro level of investment down to the socially shaped psychology (has begun to dictate) how we think and feel.” Henwood is right to wonder “how the imperium can long survive this sort of pervasive rot” as the ideological and cultural foundations on which the bourgeoisie rest, and through which it, at least in part, claims its legitimacy begin to founder.

As if on cue, at about the same time a piece appeared in the house organ of neo-liberalism the New Republic taking aim at an admittedly tiny but nonetheless significant bourgeois institution, classical music instruction, which  middle-class parents, and those striving to move up the class ladder, have imposed on their children as a kind of secular catechism for generations.

Its author, New York Times religion correspondent Mark Oppenheimer concedes that “(s)tudying music or dance over a long time teaches perseverance and can build self-confidence” and “that there is virtue in mastering difficult disciplines.” But he is at pains to draw a rigid distinction between what we do in our spare time and work — or, more precisely, what we should do in each.