John Smyth wrote:

>So won't you trust academics to help you through a personal re-assessment
>of Liszt?

If a re-assessment of Liszt was important to me, I'd utilize every source
I could to effect the re-assessment, indluding academic sources.  But, it
is not significant to me to any degree of that nature.  As it is, I do
re-listen to Liszt and some other composers every few years to see if my
assessment might change.

>What makes an academic an academic is the *promise* to constantly
>re-assess and scrutinize internal and external knowledge and beliefs
>in order to expose and curtail misinformation.

That's a great statement that should be on the front page of every college
brochure.  It's the ideal and the best that academia has to offer.  But,
humans being what they are, there is much more to academia than "searching
for the truth".  Overall, I think that the typical citizen would be shocked
to see academia in action, most of which bears little resemblence to the
high principles espoused by John and others.  I do wish it was otherwise.

Just a regular guy who reports what he sees,

Don Satz
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