Modern society, with its widespread affluence, was showing itself “willing to allow for the existence of parasites,” freeloaders who took from it without adding value. “This is essentially what the student class has already become,” he told the scholars, businessmen, and funders. “If we do not like what we see,” the “simple solution” was clear: “close off the parasitic option.”29 Before the decade was out, he would be recommending that for nearly all who looked to government for assistance with one thing or another.

