A time of impoverished judgment …

… Flowers of Evil | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… while there is, of course, a subjective element to all judgment, to view it as only subjective is as absurd as it is hypocritical. If all judgments were merely subjective, all ideas and actions, all products of human creation, would be equally valuable or invaluable, as the case may be.

The first sentence of this article demonstrates the point. To dismiss Emerson as a bad writer is certainly subjective, and is, in my view, objectively false. By the way, it was "a foolish consistency" that Emerson was referring to, not consistency in general. So also it is not taste in general, but the taste that is merely fashionable that could be called the hobgoblin of little minds.

Dave sends along this: Robert D. Richardson.