Whether social scientists conclude from measurements of civic ignorance and indifference that democracy should be jettisoned or that efforts at “civic education” should be increased, the basic assumption is the same: liberalism can correct what most contemporary liberals can’t recognize that liberalism itself created. The ignorance of its own history and aims—the “presentism” of liberals—is one of liberalism’s greatest defenses against recognition that it generates a civic catastrophe that it then claims it must cure by the application of more liberalism.
