Writing recently in the book pages of The Wall Street Journal, the constitutional scholar Hadley Arkes noted that

in malls throughout the country, managers have found a simple device for preventing teenagers from taking over the public square: They pipe in Mozart quartets and the youngsters flee. Something in their souls cannot bear Mozart, which is another way of saying that their souls have been formed by another style of music.

Indeed. No one would mistake the accoustic assaults of groups like Nine Inch Nails or Smashing Pumpkins for Mozart, or anything like Mozart. Professor Arkes made this observation at the beginning of his review of Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork’s new book about the culture wars. It was exactly the right anecdote for the subject. For the relevance of music—or perhaps we should say the relevance of the perversion of music—to the contemporary culture ...

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