Sublime

The oldest conflict in American politics is the one between individualism and centralism. Reagan changed the terms by inverting them: the descendants of Jefferson’s yeoman farmers, with their desire for independence, became sturdy car-company executives and investment bankers yearning to breathe free of big government. The heirs of Hamilton’s

The Warren Court, though, rejected clear and present danger for a “redeeming social importance” test, a unique burden foisted on no other form of expression. Because liberal notions of normalcy precluded arguments for prurience as itself containing social importance, or for graphic depictions of sexuality as inherently political forms of

an overcentralized state eroding local institutions; globalized markets diminishing the resilience of the national economy; hollowed-out civic institutions combined with weak relationships of trust and obligation.

Finally, in an abject surrender to the situation, in an abdication of the authority of knowledge, came the elective system. This was followed by a carnival of specialism, professionalism, and vocationalism, often fostered and protected by strange bureaucratic devices, so that on the honored name of university there traded a weird congeries of

The foundational trade-off of the internet was to cast scarcity, consensus, and identity aside in favor of freedom and openness.