In January 2021, in the turbulent wake of the last presidential contest, a former professor named Todd Rose asked some 2,000 people a question. The survey was, at least on the surface, designed to deduce what kind of country Americans would like future generations to inherit. Each person was presented with 55 separate goal statements for the nation—“People have individual rights” was one; “People have high-quality health care” was another—and asked to rank them in order of importance.