Value.

At any time between 1750 and 1930 if you asked educated people to describe the aim of poetry, art or music, they would have replied "beauty." And if you had asked for the point of that you would have learned that beauty is a value, as important as truth and goodness. Then in the 20th century beauty stopped being important. Art increasingly aimed to disturb and to break moral taboos. It was not beauty but originality however achieved and at whatever moral cost that won the prizes. Not only has art made a cult of ugliness. Architecture too has become soul-less and sterile. And it is not just our physical surroundings that have become ugly. Our language, our music and our manners are increasingly raucous, self-centered and offensive as though beauty and good taste have no real place in our lives. One word is written large on all these ugly things and that word is "Me." My profits, my desires, my pleasures. And art has nothing to say in response to this except "Yeah, go for it!"

Sir Roger Scruton, from the introduction to his 2009 BBC masterpiece, Why Beauty Matters, a companion to the warrior's manifesto against the cult of modernity

Thank you, Kurt.