If Alexis de Tocqueville returned to America after nearly 200 years, what, once he had freed himself from the tender ministrations of the TSA, would the author of Democracy in America think? It would not take long to discover that he had been right to worry that time would turn two American strengths into weaknesses. Democracy had fostered a “tyranny of the majority.” Individualism had atomized society. But these would not be the most striking changes.

America had acquired an intellectual class. The Americans of 1831 had done without this luxury. Perhaps that was why they made such pleasant company. They had universities back then, but these, as in France, were generally finishing schools for rich halfwits. No change there. Except back then, the university had served the reigning ethos of the society. In America, Tocqueville would notice that the university has reshaped the other institutions of American life (the bureaucracy, the media, even the churches) in its image. The tail is wagging le chien.