Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Excellent piece from Walter Russell Mead
What ails America? Walter Russell Mead has a very perceptive analysis, succinct and quite thoughtful. Unless you are a subscriber to The American Interest, clicking will use up your one free article per month. It's worth it.
A few excerpts:
"The state of our union can be summed up pretty easily: Democratic policy ideas don’t work, and the Republican Party is melting down."
...
"The more “Democratic” an institution is these days, on the whole the less well it is working. What institution in the United States has been under Democratic control longer and more thoroughly than the failing public school systems of major cities? Or their police departments?
"Yet against the backdrop of failing Democratic policies and institutions, the collapse of the Republican Party into political and intellectual incoherence is all the more striking. The Democrats, for all their inability to achieve their stated end of social progress through their chosen means of good governance, are clearly more competent at the essential business of party management than their GOP rivals. The failures of Democratic governance are so apparent, and the public unhappiness with the cronyism and inequality of interest group liberalism so deep, that organizing an effective opposition should be a fairly easy task—but even that basic objective has eluded the contemporary GOP."
...
"American culture was originally shaped by a set of Christian and Enlightenment ideas, sometimes in tension with each other, that nevertheless provided a framework for common social and political discussion. We’ve moved away from this classic American synthesis without finding an effective replacement—if indeed a replacement can be found—and both the spiritual and intellectual roots of American life are growing more and more attenuated."
WRM's piece is definitely worth reading.
A few excerpts:
"The state of our union can be summed up pretty easily: Democratic policy ideas don’t work, and the Republican Party is melting down."
...
"The more “Democratic” an institution is these days, on the whole the less well it is working. What institution in the United States has been under Democratic control longer and more thoroughly than the failing public school systems of major cities? Or their police departments?
"Yet against the backdrop of failing Democratic policies and institutions, the collapse of the Republican Party into political and intellectual incoherence is all the more striking. The Democrats, for all their inability to achieve their stated end of social progress through their chosen means of good governance, are clearly more competent at the essential business of party management than their GOP rivals. The failures of Democratic governance are so apparent, and the public unhappiness with the cronyism and inequality of interest group liberalism so deep, that organizing an effective opposition should be a fairly easy task—but even that basic objective has eluded the contemporary GOP."
...
"American culture was originally shaped by a set of Christian and Enlightenment ideas, sometimes in tension with each other, that nevertheless provided a framework for common social and political discussion. We’ve moved away from this classic American synthesis without finding an effective replacement—if indeed a replacement can be found—and both the spiritual and intellectual roots of American life are growing more and more attenuated."
WRM's piece is definitely worth reading.
