At the (U. of Chicago-centric) chicagoboyz.net, blogger Lexington Green wrote on May 5:

"Given the state of the academy in this year of grace 2008, this area of study [military history] is probably better off keeping some distance from the intellectual corruption which is unfortunately so pervasive. Military history is too important to be wholly taken over entirely by the current crop of academics."

The article is pertinent not only as it specifically regards Military History, but also as it is more generally applicable.

"The downside," Lexington Green continues, "is that students don’t get exposed to it [and other critically important American topics] in a classroom setting."

Telling of his stint hiring newly minted college graduates for the State Department, the veteran foreign service officer who blogs at Diplomadic.blogspot.com [post of May 7] related how a typical "highly-educated" applicant responded to his " World War II Test" -- "She stared at me and said, 'What does World War II have to do with NATO, the Cold War and Europe?'"

The Leftist dialect is all about "social science", but as George F. Will recently wrote, "Social science tells us not what to do but what is not working..."

Put less delicately: academia, Dean's Democrat Party, and the media, are rotted through with identity politics, class envy, and poisonous memes. (Heck, Bill Ayers -- an unabashed bomber and virtual fountainhead of Marxism -- is a tenured prof of education (!) at U. of Chicago.)

Given more HBO-like John Adams (and less Moyers-coddled Jeremiah Wright) perhaps some of the right stuff about private property, natural law, and self-evident truths will sink into one or two carbon-based political units at PBS and programming there will become less of a Gramscian chore.

How 'bout a Ken Burns on Algernon Sidney? on the trek of Henry Knox? on Common Sense or The Federalist Papers?