Back to 1984: The Role of American Universities in Dismantling Liberal Democracy

Abstract

This article discusses the psychological pressures of free society and the resulting tendency towards totalitarianism -- an ever-present cultural undercurrent in liberal democracies. Recessive in periods of optimism (created by economic growth, military victories, international prestige), this tendency may become dominant when national self-confidence vanes and especially dangerous when it takes hold of the cultural elites. The position occupied by the university system, these elites’ alma mater and major employer, is particularly important. A bastion against the totalitarian tendency during significant scientific breakthroughs which increase the authority of science (representing and requiring freedom of thought and expression as a necessary condition of intellectual creativity), it becomes its hothouse with the development of bureaucracy, when emphasis on creativity is inevitably replaced by the stress on competence. Today, it is argued here, all the conditions favoring totalitarian tendency combine to undermine liberal democratic society from within, with freedom of expression being the first target of attack.