Today, Neither Left Nor Right Can Find

The Different American Experience Of The 20th Century Is Crucial Because The Lesson Of The Century For Europe, Which Essentially Is That The Human Condition Is Tragic, Led It To Have A Build A Welfare System And A Set Of Laws And Social Arrangements That Are More Prophylactic Than Idealistic. It's Not About Building Perfect Futures; It's About Preventing Terrible Pasts. I Think That Is Something That Europeans In The Second Half Of The 20th Century Knew In Their Bones And Americans Never Did, And It's One Of The Big Differences Between The Two Western Cultures.

I Do Think We're On The Edge Of A Terrifying World, And That Many Young People Know That But Don't Know How To Talk About It.

Above All, The Thrall In Which An Ideology Holds A People Is Best Measured By Their Collective Inability To Imagine Alternatives.

All Modern U.s. Presidents Are Perforce Politicians, Prisoners Of Their Past Pronouncements, Their Party, Their Constituency, And Their Colleagues.

Undergraduates Today Can Select From A Swathe Of Identity Studies.... The Shortcoming Of All These Para-academic Programs Is Not That They Concentrate On A Given Ethnic Or Geographical Minority; It Is That They Encourage Members Of That Minority To Study Themselves - Thereby Simultaneously Negating The Goals Of A Liberal Education And Reinforcing The Sectarian And Ghetto Mentalities They Purport To Undermine.