The purge of conservative or even traditional liberal thought from the universities and the media is already having an impact on democracy. Some 40 percent of American millennials favor limiting speech deemed offensive to minorities, well above the 27 percent among Gen-Xers, 24 percent among Boomers, and 12 percent among the oldest cohorts. Millennials are also far more likely to be dismissive of basic constitutional civil rights, and more sanguine about a military coup than previous generations.

Similarly, European millennials display far less faith in democracy and fewer objections to autocratic control than previous generations, which lived under dictatorships or in their aftermath. Young Europeans are almost three times as likely to say democracy is failing than their elders.

The spread of mass education may have exemplified the promise of liberal civilization. But, without an understanding and appreciation of what allowed it to flourish, it could also accelerate its dissolution. The reduction and reshaping of the past are essential to undermining liberal democracy. The great exemplars of the past—Washington, Madison, Burke, Jefferson, Lincoln, Churchill—all warned that human beings are not necessarily good and, for that reason, power must be dispersed and restrained not concentrated. Yet we are witnessing the creation of a society, as envisioned by HG Wells, controlled by a credentialed elite. This “emergent class of capable men,” Wells wrote, should take upon itself the task of “controlling and restricting…the non-functional masses.” This new elite, he predicted, would replace democracy with “a higher organism” of what he called “the New Republic.”5