Elbaum is a freshman at George Washington University.
Thomas Jefferson famously said that "an educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people." In other words, in order for the United States to survive as a democracy, its people must be informed.
Jefferson would be rolling in his grave if he saw the state of our country today. The people are far from informed, and that is putting our country in grave danger of collapse.
We live in a country where less than one-third of people can name all three branches of the federal government, where 70 percent do not know the Constitution is the supreme law of the land — and where 10 percent of college graduates believe Judge Judy is a justice of the Supreme Court.
If that is not scary enough, the picture is far more concerning among young Americans. Among millennials, 70 percent say they would be "likely" to vote for a socialist candidate, 36 percent approve of communism, only 8 percent can identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War and a quarter say that "choosing leaders through free elections is unimportant." Young Americans are painfully ignorant of history, too. About a quarter say they view the Holocaust as a myth or had been exaggerated and two-thirds do not know that as many as 6 million Jews were massacred. The bloody history of the Soviet Union is unknown as well; why else would the far-left economic and political systems of the 20th century be making a staggering rebound now?
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity," Martin Luther King Jr. said. America is experiencing a pandemic of both right now.
Our deteriorated political discourse is an inevitable byproduct of our ignorance. Radical, revolutionary voices are being elevated over their calmer counterparts. Many in the Democratic Party are now embracing a vision of America that condemns it root-and-branch. They want to end the filibuster and add seats to the Supreme Court. This is a recipe for an implosion of the American ideal. On the right, of course, the continued embrace of President Trump — who has expressed antipathy toward what should be the neutral principle of peaceful transitions of power — is also a reason for concern.
The American experiment has been the greatest and most successful experiment in governance in world history. Now it is at risk of being destroyed by the very people who benefit most from it. In order to restore our country, we must return to first principles. This happens through education.
In suburban Chicago, I was lucky enough to be a part of the first class in my high school for whom a civics course was required. There was absolutely room for improvement but it was a necessary first step taken by my school. Colorado and Idaho have exceptional civics curriculums. The former goes in-depth into American government and the latter emphasizes the importance of this education from a young age.
Their lead should be followed by others across the country. After all, there is a direct relationship between civics education in school and civics knowledge later in life.
If we want to create a more informed populous, we know what must be done. However, only nine states, along with the District of Columbia, require a full year of civics in high school. To ensure that the root ideals of our country are passed onto the next generation, not only more widespread education but also better education is needed.
Our civics classrooms should highlight what makes the United States unique and why we live in a country worth defending. We must be teaching about the value of the separation of powers, checks and balances, an independent judiciary and democracy itself. An abandonment of age-old ideas becomes inevitable when education is not paramount.
It took almost 250 years to make America what she is today. It may only take one generation to see its collapse. The stakes are higher than ever, and it is up to us as to what path we will take.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.