Indeed, if critical thinking is necessary for freedom but corrosive of tradition, cultural conservatives must be wary of freedom.
An announcement at that point by the attorney general, especially one without the transparency our traditions permitted, would have done corrosive damage to public faith in the investigation and the institutions of justice.
Sometimes it takes an outsider to see that traditions that seem quaint are, in fact, corrosive.
Proponents of home funerals and of green burials, wherein bodies are interred in natural environments and in ways that promote decomposition, insist that this country's "death-denying tradition," in Lyons' term, is not merely costly but corrosive to body and spirit, to land and communities.
Truth be told, some of us older members of the Left, of Social Democracy, of the Trade Unions, of the Liberal Democratic tradition, have in the past paid insufficient attention to the corrosive effect on our very thinking of the growth-at-all-cost mentality.
But Democrats who tend to prefer an opportunity-first approach over an inequality-first approach should still tune in: As Yale historian Samuel Moyn recently observed, even the robust tradition of human rights is less effective and less imaginative due to the corrosive impact of inequality.
(Sisario) THE KILLS (Thursday) Following in a long tradition of arch blues-punks, this American-British, male-female duo surrounds sexy, corrosive riffs with no shortage of sneers and pouts, romanticizing the eternal pursuit of trashy chic: "I'm bored of cheap and cheerful," sings Alison Mosshart, a k a V V, "I want expensive sadness".
Kelley is usefully exploring the corrosive ways that legalisms infect the most informal interactions at school and in the workplace when traditions of trust and manners break down.
