Not long ago, America was more than the sum of its parts. Now, it is less. Around World War II, we were proud as a people but modest as individuals. Fewer than two people in ten said yes when asked, Are you a very important person? Today, more than six in ten say yes. Where we once thought ourselves collectively strong, we now regard ourselves as... See more

No matter the era, conservatism is a story about how 50-year-old white guys thought everything was better back when they were 13, before the bad people came along and made it so things couldn’t stay the same forever. (This fetishized past used to be the 1940s or ‘50s. By updated math, civilization’s current peak was 1987.)

But in any case, this is a huge idea, and one that America desperately needs in these trying times. For half a century, we assumed that America was this golden goose — the greatest industrial nation in the world, blah blah — that would reliably pump out massive amounts of stuff, and that we were all essentially just the custodians of this... See more