ABSTRACT
This essay was originally presented at the Ingersoll Symposium, “The Mind and Morals of the Millennial Generation,” in October of 2001, within six weeks of the terrorist attacks of September 11, and then published in The Public Interest in the Spring 2002 issue. The second half of the essay, in particular, contains observations about the national atmosphere in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Since the essay’s argument about the relation between liberal democracy and liberal education is entwined with these time-bound observations, rather than attempt to excise the latter, I have left the essay exactly as I wrote it then—a testament to the struggle to find the permanent and transcendent within the shocking and painful whirl of historic events.
