““The American attachment to intellectual self-reliance described by Tocqueville survived for nearly a century before falling under a series of assaults from both within and without. Technology, universal secondary education, the proliferation of specialized expertise, and the emergence of the United States as a global power in the mid-twentieth century all undermined the idea—or, more accurately, the myth—that the average American was adequately equipped either for the challenges of daily life or for running the affairs of a large country. Over””