Liberal Democracy Is Under Assault

I urge you to read Andrew A. Michta’s essay at The American Interest. Here is his peroration:

Unmoored from its cultural heritage and increasingly ignorant of its history, the West is fragmenting along racial, ethnic, and ideological lines. In the United States the process is well under way of transforming “e pluribus unum” into an American Balkans in which warring groups squabble over past grievances—real and imagined—and where a sense of patriotism and the mutuality of obligation so fundamental to a nation under a republican form of government is being purged from the culture. Here America is not alone, as similar undercurrents of unfreedom are deconstructing some of the oldest political traditions in Europe.

He cites some chilling statistics, e.g. that 90% of American colleges have speech codes that limit discourse and that 2/3s of Americans don’t think they’re free to speak their minds.

I don’t think that his concerns should be merely dismissed as insignificant.