I think the very idea of the social contract is in disarray.

The war being waged against the radical imagination, particularly around young people, is just startling. Young people are laboring under a burden of debt that so ties them to a survivalist mode of existence that it's impossible for them to dream anymore. Trying to recognize what the forces are that actually squelch the imagination is a lot more interesting to me than people who go and "find themselves" because they're no longer on the grid.

The promises of modernity regarding progress, freedom and hope have not been eliminated; they have been reconfigured, stripped of their emancipatory potential and relegated to the logic of a savage market instrumentality.

The war on terror, rebranded under Obama as the "Overseas Contingency Operation," has morphed into war on democracy.

War is one of the nation's most honored virtues, and its militaristic values now bear down on almost every aspect of American life.

Young people, under the social contract, suggest a long term investment. What we have today is a government that believes that young people - since they are a long term investment - are a liability. This is system that only believes in short-term investments.

The demise of higher education as a public good is also evident in light of the election of a number of right-wing politicians who are cutting funds for state universities and doing everything they can to turn them in training centers to fill the needs of corporations. This new and intense attack on both the social state and higher education completely undermines the public nature of what education is all about.