Via Marginal Revolution: Larry Summers on Elizabeth Warren’s plan to finance Medicare:
‘This time seems different. Judged relative to gross domestic product, the Medicare-for-all program dwarfs the federal spending hikes of the New Deal and the Great Society. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson emphasized that their new benefits would be paid for by contributions from their middle-class beneficiaries. With Warren’s plan, it is the combination of vast new entitlements with total reliance on the top 1 percent for revenue that puts us in uncharted and, I fear, dangerous territory.’
From the outside looking in: I can see some older, Democratic coalitions of working voters migrating towards Trump’s populism, as identity politics seems to have become a main platform of that party. Civil Rights and social justice activism have become quite influential, as well. The radicals (anarchists, antifa, Socialists, Communists, etc) are still around, of course, probably in a tense relationship with any party structure.
Larry Summers, briefly became a witch.
It looks like for some young people, Democratic Socialism is a respectable option.
As for my own political coalitions, I suppose I’m on the lookout for anyone reasonable, including old-guard liberals and libertarians (more likely to be pro-market, traditional, less dependent upon radical utopianism). Beneath the old guard I see many people forming ‘-Ism’ coalitions, with varying degrees of experience and knowledge in their respective domains, whatever you may think of those domains’ knowledge claims (feminism, environmentalism, globalism, collectivism etc). Such folks have demands which will express themselves through coalition-building, institutional administrative structures, bureaucracy, media hierarchies and party politics.
As to individuals, I try to take folks as they come, and hope they do the same for me.
As posted:
Oliver Traldi at Quillete reviews Mark Lilla- ‘The Once And Future Liberal: After Identity Politics‘
‘Lilla’s own explanation of his liberalism, given by the book’s structure, is that politics is liberal by definition.‘
and:
‘Lilla clearly thinks he is making a pragmatic case, but he does not engage with any empirical political science; no numbers of any kind—polls, turnout, what have you—appear in the book.’
Despite the narrowness of understanding and lack of empirical rigor on display (liberal political idealism is the lingua franca of many a humanities department), I don’t mind Lilla’s plea for more national unity and moderate party politics in American life.
Do I really think Democrat donor parties claiming national greatness, neo-liberal economics and an evening of Beatles songs at the Kennedy Center are enough to placate the activists and radicals?
No.
Do I think the old conservative guard and National Review cruises are going to unite the populist, angry and economically left-behind members of the Right, including some actual race-mongers and dangerous ideologues?
No.
Repost-Quotation From Charles Kesler And A Few Thoughts on Conservatism
See the previous post.The Intellectual Cowardice Of The Crowd-Charles Murray At Middlebury College
Charles Murray’s Account Of The Middlebury College Affair
Link To Roger Scruton’s First Of Three Charles Test Lectures Hosted By Princeton University
From The Internet Encyclopedia Of Knowledge: Immanuel Kant And Utilitarianism