Gunfight at the Shavano Corral

A shootout is brewing in the shadow of the Continental Divide. The Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, philosophical sandbox of Establishment liberalism since Harry Truman’s time, is about to get some competition in its ideas-for-executives mission from a boisterous new conservative counterpart.

Aspen’s programs to “sensitize business leaders to their social responsibilities by immersing them in a program of humanistic education” (New York Times, August 30, 1981) now reach far beyond that Rocky Mountain resort town to locations as distant as New York, West Berlin, and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Always mild, dignified, earnest, and high-toned, the Aspen Institute has played a significant role in helping enthrone relativist center-left thinking as the conventional wisdom in post-World War II America. No other organization of any stripe has challenged its dominance in the field of the businessmen’s public-policy seminar.

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Barton Winfield

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A shootout is brewing in the shadow of the Continental Divide. The Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, philosophical sandbox of Establishment liberalism since Harry Truman’s time, is about to get some competition in its ideas-for-executives mission from a boisterous new conservative counterpart.

Aspen’s programs to “sensitize business leaders to their social responsibilities by immersing them in a program of humanistic education” (New York Times, August 30, 1981) now reach far beyond that Rocky Mountain resort town to locations as distant as New York, West Berlin, and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Always mild, dignified, earnest, and high-toned, the Aspen Institute has played a significant role in helping enthrone relativist center-left thinking as the conventional wisdom in post-World War II America. No other organization of any stripe has challenged its dominance in the field of the businessmen’s public-policy seminar.