american history. let s me say, first, as a historian i m struck by the fact that a substantial segment of the population today seems to have no sense of the common good, collective welfare. the fact that we re all in this together. there s a kind of rampant severalish individualism that prevails. we see that with skip tic skepte school system. we saw it with the debate over health care, the notion that, well, you have to be able to pay and pay a lot for anything you want or need, whether it s an education, whether it s good health insurance. you know, andrew carnegie, the steel magnate used to say the more unequal american society, the better. he said it was a measure of the