At the very minimum, they are people who are – in Susan Sontag’s definition of a writer – “interested in everything”.

Today’s pop culture offers few examples of such people. What we get instead is a superficial and unsatisfying churn of short-term celebs and trends. The space vacated by challenging novels, experimental cinema, and difficult... See more

In 1938 humans were offered three global stories to choose from, in 1968 just two, and in 1998 a single story seemed to prevail. In 2018 we are down to zero. No wonder that the liberal elites, who dominated much of the world in recent decades, are in a state of shock and disorientation. To have one story is the most reassuring situation of all.

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As a replacement for liberalism and its infinitely expanding universe of spoiled consumers and bureaucrats, he sought inspiration in the lower-middle-class ethos of the American populist tradition, with its emphasis on the community-centered, “heroic” morality of small-scale producers—artisans, shopkeepers, and farmers. Lasch called for a renewal

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