Sep 6, 2009
By No Means Entitled
I believe that everyone in America but a selected thousand should be compelled to accept a very rigid system of morals—Roman Catholicism, for instance. I don’t complain of conventional morality. I complain rather of the mediocre heretics who seize upon the findings of sophistication and adopt the pose of a moral freedom to which they are by no means entitled by their intelligence.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, giving voice, through the character of Maury Noble, in The Beautiful and the Damned, to the Eastern Establishment (p.456, Library of America).
He’s right with respect to the “mediocre heretics.” And optimistic with respect to the “selected few” (even granting, for sake of argument, that there’s someone, somewhere, capable of the selecting).