We are in a moment in time when newspapers, humanities departments, museums, bookstores, publishing houses, theatres, galleries, and every arts discipline—music, dance, theatre, poetry, literature, sculpture, painting—is being eviscerated.

Yet, there is NO NATIONAL CONVERSATION about the overall threat to our cultural life.

Journalists, artists and academics are so overwhelmed with trying to preserve their particular piece of the cultural pie that they are not confronting the root causes of society’s indifference—even outright hostility to the arts and humanities—

—except in the world of right-wing ideologues who do take the culture seriously. They are pouring billions of dollars into crushing what they perceive as the liberal/woke takeover of the culture, just like they crushed liberalism on the Supreme Court.

There is no simple solution to what is happening to the arts and humanities. The reason can be found in the core values of the nation.

At its inception, the country employed misfits and outcasts as teachers.