In reading the introductory part of “No Future,” I kept thinking about a pop-culture representation of the need to ‘Save the Children,’ which Edelman lays at the foundation of politics and Western life: the 1964 Lyndon Johnson campaign ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKs-bTL-pRg) in which the little girl counts (incorrectly, nonetheless, which probably was done so as to make her more endearing to viewers) as she picks off petals from a daisy, and then a nuclear bomb blows up.