Is that the Republican line these days? Mr. Black has a lot of suggestions:
‘What is needed is a colossal reorientation of the country away from consumption and toward investment, the cleaning out of the morass of the plea-bargain justice system and attendant vacuum cleaners of the legal and prison industries (and the gigantic fraud of the War on Drugs), drastic education reform, genuine health-care reform, a redefinition of U.S. national interests in the world to what is essential and defensible, and then restructured alliances to reflect shared interests. Until those issues are addressed, all talk of the American superpower is rubbish. Obama’s is the fourth consecutive failed administration, and each succeeding one will make the festering problems more dangerous and difficult.’
That’s a lot to ask of politics, but points taken. Is history to be used in order to craft statemanship, or should we aim higher than such a Zinn-like state? As always, one concern is not necessarily moral, but practical: What are the harms that idealism can do to the efficacy of public institutions?
Also On This Site: Repost-Lawrence Lessig At Bloggingheads: ‘Fixing Our Broken System?’…From A Brief Review At Newsweek: Andrew Bacevich’s ‘The Road To Ruin’…Fareed Zakaria BBC Interview: America In Decline…Richard Lieber In The World Affairs Journal–Falling Upwards: Declinism, The Box Set…
Where are the conservative voices?: Two Sunday Quotations By Albert Jay Nock in ‘Anarchist’s Progress’
