"The eyes and the heart form an extraordinarily powerful force. They can only be overcome when formulating policies by a mind and a value system that are stronger than the heart-eye duo. With the decline of Judeo-Christian religions, the heart, shaped by what the eye sees (hence the power of television), has become the source of people's moral decisions.

This is a potentially fatal problem for our civilization. As beautiful as the heart might be, it is neither intellectually nor morally profound.

It is therefore frightening that hundreds of millions of people find no problem in acknowledging that their heart is the source of their values. Their heart knows better than thousands of years of accumulated wisdom; better than religions shaped by most of the finest thinkers of our civilization (and, to the believer, by G-d ); and better than the book that has guided our society — from the Founders of our uniquely successful society to the foes of slavery to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and most of the leaders of the struggle for racial equality.

This elevation of one's heart is well beyond self-confidence — it is self-deification."

Heart versus mind, JWR style. The "Enlightened," in that final twist of irony, are those who refuse to think about things, refuse to consider the brilliant minds of the past, refuse to consider logic and truth at all. Their "hearts" are quite enough. The refusal of a society to think about anything of significance, I think, is unprecedented in history. It can not be a good sign.