The downsizing of higher education by states facing budget crunches in bad times is no aberration. It’s been a long, slow burn, the legacy of a hardline brand of conservatism that champions defunding government and giving private interests, including Wall Street, ever more control over American life.

Conservative activist Grover Norquist, a fixture in the ongoing "fiscal cliff" talks in Washington, once infamously said of government that he wanted to "reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." There you have it.

That kind of thinking, as historian and TomDispatch regular Steve Fraser, author of Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace, points out, has blighted not just public universities but also the blue-collar heart of America, leaving a trail of broken communities struggling to rebuild and reimagine the lives they once had. Andy Kroll