The political philosopher Isaiah Berlin made famous a line from Joseph Schumpeter: “To realize the relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian.” But this is exactly what some social critics would deny. Doubt about the validity of one's convictions breeds relativism and relativism is the enemy of what is best about our culture, it is claimed. The most bombastic of them is William Bennett, whom I quoted in Chapter 1: “In living memory the chief threats to America Democracy have come from without: first, Nazism and Japanese imperialism, and later, Soviet communism. But these wars, hot or cold, ended in spectacular American victories. The threats we now face are from within. They are far different, more difficult to detect, and more insidious: decadence, cynicism, and boredom.” Bennett traces these threats to a culture of self-doubt and relativism. This is what Jeffrey Goldfarb takes to be the source of cynicism in American life: “When we no longer know that our way of life is best, we learn to respect others, but we also learn to doubt ourselves.