One good student revolt against the liberal orthodoxy will be a shattering blow to their meme. And it is not wholly inconceivable.

Not wholly inconceivable, perhaps, but extremely unlikely.

I’m currently going through a UCLA podcast course on Western Civ. The tenor of the course is that the French Revolution was the singular, most important event in modern history because it established that history, tradition, and custom were meaningless. That society, the culture, and the political system “could be shaped” by men of vision and strong will.

The prestige, self-esteem, and emotional payoff of being in control that comes with becoming one of the “shapers” of cultures is an awfully strong motivation for human beings. Perhaps the strongest motivation of all. I believe that the promise of this supreme emotional payoff is the reason that Marxism, and its red-headed stepchild Progressivism, will not go away despite the trail of mangled corpses the shapers must negotiate.

It’s the Adam and Eve story all over again – for a man to live peacefully among other men he must first refuse to be a god. Adam and Eve flunked.

The American Experiment of 1776 was, above all, an attempt to institutionalize the god refusal, or at least an attempt to make it as difficult as possible for those who would choose the apple over their brothers.

The Republic, at least as we imagined it, no longer exists. Perhaps it never did. Maybe conceding custody of the apple tree to the slave owners on the hope they would forego the harvest was a fools errand after all.