ABSTRACT
Politics in the United States and Great Britain are again marked by intense hostility toward the expanded role of modern liberal states. Since most opponents of public investment are simultaneously enthusiastic consumers of many of its results—for example, public education—the feebleness of most defenses of public investment is usually hard to understand. But not always, because it is notoriously difficult to persuade people one cannot be bothered to understand, or toward whom one is visibly contemptuous. Some suggestive evidence: New York Times commentary and reporting on the crisis in public funding of higher education, notably Stanley Fish’s 10/11/10 column on the cuts at SUNY Binghamton (“The Crisis of the Humanities Officially Arrives”), and the paper’s reporting on comparable events in the UK (“Universities in Britain Brace for Cuts in Subsidies,” on 10/15/10).
