Liberal Arts curriculums, when they were first rolled out, were intended to educate our citizens to run our Constitutional Republic well. Such programs were meant to foster the virtues of their graduates, sharpen their wits, develop the capacity for self expression and rational argumentation, and provide them with a broad base of knowledge by which to better help our nation navigate the stormy seas of growth and coexistence with hostile nations.
This they did splendidly for quite some time. Then approximately in the 1960’s, the whole thing went to hell. A storm front blew in from Europe which rejected virtue, per se, outside of conformity to the collective, and that effectively ended the capacity for rational thought of most of our Humanities professors.
Now liberal arts graduated no longer possess broad general knowledge. Through the intercession of Freudian notions of instinct and repression, they are taught that what formerly passed for virtue–as for example in chastity outside of a loving relationship–was unnatural. They are taught little about history, the process of formal debate and rhetoric, and quite generally graduate with considerably less common sense (which I define as “knowing what you know, and knowing what you don’t know”) than they went in with.
Over time, this has affected our political discourse in such a way that sound bites, 30 second news stories, and conformity dictate a very high percentage of what people believe in this nation.
Manifestly, most conservatives are religious, or pro-business. Very few of those who ought to have widened and deepened both their tolerance and their cosmopolitanism care any more to indulge in non-ironic patriotism, or preach the importance of personal responsibility.
This long term trend will, if not reversed, lead to our eventual complete decline and failure.