As America fattens with material successes and weakens with self-serving and delusional resentments, it is removed from many of the challenges and tests that build strength, obsessed with matters of sex, enchanted by superficial entertainments, and infected with nonsensical ideas. For the latter see, inter alia, Marx, Dewey, Derrida, Sartre, Marcuse, and, though only a philosophical Minnie Mouse, Ibram X. Kendi.

The path to destruction is as brilliantly lit as in post-republican Rome, and is not due to imperial overstretch, which is neither what brought down Rome nor what ails us now. Rather, the cause was and is the rot in a civilization that turns against the principles that enabled it after faithful adherence to find peace, tranquility, and honor. For us, such adherence is vanishing as rapidly as are civilizing traditions.

Despite the truth, beauty, and genius of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, America’s foundational principles have never enjoyed a guarantee of allegiance. To preserve them and refresh their vitality, the Claremont Institute was founded. Like the Claremont Review of Books, its attentions have been directed at scholars, policymakers, incipient policymakers, and—catch-as-catch-can—the general public.

But not at the general population of students, late high school through college, even though for