Category Archives: Ethics and Public Policy Center

The Fractured Republic II. Where Do We Go From Here?

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I normally take what I consider to be a straightforward non-ideological approach to solving our country’s major problems. But in my last post, “The Fractured Republic,” I consider a larger framework constructed by the writer, Yuval Levin, who argues that both conservatives and progressives are stuck in nostalgia for a mid-twentieth century way of life to which it is impossible to return. As Mr. Levin points out, the last 100 years of American life have seen a consistent pattern of

  • Drawing together and then pulling apart. Three particular aspects of this phenomenon are pictured in the three charts below concerning immigration, political polarization and income inequality.
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  • Midcentury America straddling two broad trends: a consolidated society actively combatting some of its least attractive downsides like institutional racism, sexism, cultural conformity and a dearth of economic freedom.
  • A diffuse and still diffusing democracy. The problems we face today are the price of progress. In liberating many individuals from oppressive social constraints, we have unmoored them from their communities, work and faith. In accepting a profusion of options, we have unraveled the established institutions of an earlier era.
  • Hollowing out of the middle layers of American society has resulted from the diffusing and polarization of our national life. Solutions need to involve a recovery of these middle layers by means that are consistent with diffusion, diversity and decentralization.

These four conclusions about the current state of our society point towards an agenda for renewal:

  • The left will have to accept that the modern U.S. economy is decentralized, with diminished union power, higher income inequality, where cultural and economic pressures work against class mobility and large, centralized federal programs are a poor fit.
  • The right will have to accept that modern American society is highly diverse, individualistic, dynamic and deconsolidated where a significant degree of cultural fracturing, family breakdown and estrangement from tradition and religion is a fact of life.

Conclusion: Very succinctly, American social and economic progress in the future will require conservatives to accept ever expanding cultural pluralism (e.g. gay marriage and transgender rights) and progressives to accept a greater degree of economic freedom and decentralization.

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The Fractured Republic

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As readers of this blog will recognize, most of the time I write about what I consider to be America’s two major fiscal and economic problems at the present time: the slow growth of our economy (only 2.1% per year for the past seven years) and our massive and rapidly growing national debt (the public debt, on which we pay interest, is now 74% of GDP, highest since the end of WWII).
Every once in a while, I step back and take a broader view.  For example, last summer I reported on a new book by James Piereson, “Shattered Consensus: the Rise and Decline of America’s Postwar Political Order” which makes a strong case that only a new revolution, the fourth in our history, will suffice to turn our troubling fiscal and economic situation around.
Capture11Today I report on a book by Yuval Levin, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, “The Fractured Republic,” which sees our current political paralysis as a result of nostalgia for the cohesive and unified America which emerged from the Great Depression and WWII.
Partisans on both sides of the political wars, both conservatives and progressives, want a reversal of some portion of the great changes in American life which have defined the postwar years, perhaps because American society has now achieved such a “perilous mix of over-centralization and hyper-individualism.”
“Progressives treasure the social liberation, cultural diversification, and expressive individualism of our time, but lament the economic dislocation and the rise of inequality and fragmentation. … Conservatives celebrate the economic liberalization, dynamism and prosperity, but lament the social instability, moral disorder, cultural breakdown and weakening of fundamental institutions and traditions.”
Mr. Levin sees a possible way out of our current conundrum which need not involve the revolution which Mr. Piereson foresees.  Basically he argues for a modernized politics of “subsidiarity,” a movement towards decentralization in our public affairs.
Stay tuned for more details!

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