What has become of free speech, free markets, and the rule of law? Sometimes a culture disappears with a whimper, not a bang. Institutions age and are ignored, and the complacent public insidiously lowers its expectations of state performance. Infrastructure, the rule of law, and civility erode — and yet people are not sure why and how their own changing (and pathological) individual behavior is leading to the collective deterioration that they deplore.

There is still... http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426080/progressives-western-civili...