Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In our taut economy, it is difficult to accept a sense of moral good rooted in anything other than me and my autonomous goals, and this has been reinforced and been overdetermined by American history. But this is thus to say that American history is limited by its youth and by the time and place in which it was born. We are like children born in a refugee camp or in war-torn region and know nothing else.
The denunciation meted out to Bill Nye for bringing basic concepts from ecology into a discussion where they were highly relevant is par for the course these days.
How—and how successfully—are Americans achieving this dream? How has the concept of the “American Dream” shifted over the past 10 years?
“The American way of life,” George H.W. Bush infamously declared in 1992, “is not-negotiable.” This presents a problem if the American way of life is also unsustainable.
