Sublime

A century ago Europeans took it for granted that some races—most notably the white race—were inherently superior to others. After 1945 such views increasingly became anathema. Racism was seen not only as morally abysmal but also as scientifically bankrupt. Life scientists, and in particular geneticists, have produced very strong scientific evidence

Starting in the 1960s, the social and legal institutions of America were remade to try to eliminate unfair choices by people in positions of responsibility. The new legal structures reflected a deep distrust of human authority in even its more benign forms—a teacher’s authority in the classroom, or a manager’s judgments about who’s doing the job, o

With at least one in four American women and one in seven American men today receiving psychoactive drugs by prescription,

These liberal, egalitarian approaches sought and seek to equalize opportunities by criminalizing discrimination, remedying disenfranchisement, and defeating bigotry by making prejudice on the grounds of immutable characteristics socially unacceptable. They thus provide an achievable goal for the well-meaning liberal individual: treat people equally

if this is true, then it would explain why extreme partisans are so stubborn, closed-minded, and committed to beliefs that often seem bizarre or paranoid. Like rats that cannot stop pressing a button, partisans may be simply unable to stop believing weird things. The partisan brain has been reinforced so many times for performing mental contortions

In 2002, George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, which massively increased standardized testing across the U.S. In the four years that followed, diagnoses of severe attention problems in children rose by 22 percent.