“‘The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon
itself.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his
words echo with painful prescience in today’s very different United
States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble — in danger of
losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of
anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations…” Susan Jacoby, Washington Post
