Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) April 3, 2026: For all practical purposes, the conservative author Christopher Caldwell is writing about our contemporary secondary oral culture in his 2020 book The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties (Simon & Schuster; I am using here the 2021 paperback edition which has addition pages in the front matter).
I do want to comment here on Caldwell's main title. The expression The Age of Entitlement does not strike me as necessarily pejorative. But Caldwell clearly intends for it to be understood as a pejorative term. However, as a non-pejorative term, The age of Entitlement could be seen as an apt way to refer to the still emerging successor of the Age of Enlightenment - which emerged historically in the print culture in our western cultural history that emerged in Europe after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the mid-1450s.
Now, by 1960, the communications media that accentuate sound had reached a critical mass in American culture with the prevalence of television sets in American homes. However, Caldwell does not mention Ong's fourfold media ecology account of Western cultural history. At first blush, Caldwell's oversight in not mentioning Ong's fourfold media ecology account of our western cultural history seems inconsequential. However, Caldwell dwells on the U.S. Constitution, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, on American culture in the sixties and subsequent decades.
But the U.S. Constitution emerged historically in print culture (in Ong's terminology) in our Western cultural history after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in Europe in the mid-1450s. (For specific page references to Caldwell's discussion of the U.S. Constitution, see the entry Constitution of the United States in Caldwell's "Index" [p. 330]).
By contrast, American culture in the sixties and subsequent decades emerged historically in our contemporary secondary oral culture (in Ong's terminology).
Now, I have decided to examine how an American conservative himself views American conservatism over the last half century or so by examining the conservative American journalist Christopher Caldwaell's book The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties (2020).
Now, Caldwell's subtitle of his 2020 book calls to mind the subtitle of Doris Kearns Godwin's 2024 book An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s (Simon & Schuster).
I have written about Doris Kearns Goodwin's 2024 book in my OEN article "Thomas J. Farrell's Personal History of the 1960s" (dated April 16, 2024; viewed 1,110 times as of April 2, 2026).
In Caldwell's Chapter 8: "Losers" (p. 258), Caldwell discusses Harvey C. Mansfield's book Manliness (Yale University Press, 2006), but Mansfield's 2006 book is not listed in Caldwell's "Bibliography."
I have written about Mansfield's 2006 book Manliness in my OEN article "Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., and Walter J. Ong, S.J., on Male Agonism" (dated January 14, 2024; viewed 1,209 times as of April 2, 2026).
Now, the most efficient way for me to provide you with an overview of Caldwell's 2020 book The Age of Entitlement is to tell you the contents of the 2021 paperback edition:
Title page (p. v)
Copyright page (p. vi)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
