“Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them…

A friend’s daughter asked me for some input on a paper she is writing for her history class (she is a freshman in college). We got into a discussion about why America didn’t devolve into chaos since it puts so much emphasis on individual freedom. We talked about how much that has changed over the…