To today's Politically Correct generation, books should not be read because they are good, but only because we agree with them. Because of this, our society is becoming increasingly inbred--which is why we see so many intellectual hemophiliacs: people who can't sustain the wound of disagreement, lest they bleed to death.
"Anyone who has read classic literature knows that there are things in old books that offend our sensibilities. And this isn't a new phenomenon either. Every generation sees something in the thought and writing of previous generations that it doesn't like or that it finds offensive.
"The difference today is not that there are any more things about the past we don't like, but in our reaction to them.
"Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Brian Morton takes note of the increasing tendency among young people to condemn out-of-hand any piece of literature that contains an intolerant character or distasteful idea.
"In the article, titled "Virginia Woolf? Snob! Richard Wright? Sexist! Dostoyevsky? Anti-Semite!" Morton mentions meeting a college student who couldn't bring himself to read more than fifty pages into Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth because he encountered an anti-Semitic character.
"Every generation down to the last one took the warnings of the occasional disagreeableness of the past under consideration and then read old books anyway. You were not expected to find these things appealing, but it was always expected that you understand the mentality behind them, a mentality you could only understand if you read about it.
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