Without going to any pains to prove it, Stewart charges that while previous ages valued honor, glory, heroic achievements, or an active public life, ours is "the first civilization to find its deepest fulfillment in its descendants. Our opium," he adds, "is our children."
The bitter partisanship of the Obama era leaves some pundits and commentators longing for political transcendence, for a land of harmony and cooperation in which Americans work together to achieve common purposes. Such longings for political and cultural unity surface whenever partisanship threatens to paralyze government and bickering brushes aside reasonable discourse and debate
News that humanities enrollments and majors are declining in American universities is not quite news, but the
New York Times recently devoted first-page attention to the trend, complete with some numbers that might be scary to at least part of the professoriate.
