This article recounts a real-life conversation relating to beliefs, opinions, and attitudes. It asserts the country's democracy needs intellectual debate, but increasingly lacks the inclination and skills to have it. Like students within their homogeneous peer groups, American citizens increasingly inhabit intellectually gated communities.…

Students in the best universities do not believe in anything, and those universities are doing nothing about it. The great questions--God, freedom, and immortality--hardly touch the young. The universities have no vision, no view of what a human being must know in order to be considered educated. (MLW)