Yascha Mounk: What America has lost since I moved here in 2007

Yascha Mounk at his own Substack:

I first came to the United States for an academic exchange at Columbia University in 2005, and have spent the bulk of my time here since starting my PhD at Harvard University in 2007. No country changes nature overnight, and America still retains many of the virtues with which I fell in love all those years ago. But there are days when I fear that the place has been transformed so deeply that the qualities that would once have been touted as quintessentially American have forever been lost.

Thinking highly of your compatriots and caring deeply about the fate of your country were once seen as virtues; now, such sentiments are rejected as proof of naïveté, perhaps even of an insidious commitment to the status quo. A young politician’s promise of “Hope and Change” once inspired America; today, many young Americans pride themselves on having awoken to the fraudulence of such illusions.

More here.

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