Well, it looks like the shutdown’s over, following what appears to be a cave-in by Democrat leadership in the Senate, which has provoked a mutinous uprising in the ranks. Robert Stacy McCain has some details, here.
The temporary funding measure will expire in January, at which point the factional struggle will resume.
Can anyone look at the state of the American political system at this point and imagine that the nation is well governed? That it’s stable enough to endure without shaking itself to pieces? That the “form” put in place at the Founding, centuries ago, is still suitable for the “matter” it must serve?
I can’t. I don’t know what comes next, but I think the “nation” — a word that hardly even applies any more — cannot continue much longer as currently constituted, and what we will see in the next few years is going to be a battle between centrifugal and centripetal forces: either a breaking and scattering into subsidiary pieces that will more naturally be able to govern themselves, or, to prevent that, a massive increase in the totalizing State, aided by exponential development of AI-based surveillance, digital currency, Chinese-style social-credit scoring, and so on.
I know which I’d prefer, but that means nothing. What are the American people willing to tolerate, for the sake of avoiding a fight? The recent lesson of COVID is not encouraging.
4 Comments
It’s not just America though Malcolm, but the West generally. You can see the same pathologies in Germany, France, Britain, Italy. Claire Berlinski, a classical liberal who I don’t always agree with but see as very perceptive, echoes you in a recent essay about the malaise in France (where she lives). Money paragraphs:
“We’re living through the fin-de-siècle phase of the great liberal order—not its collapse in a single cataclysm, but its progressive moral and structural degradation. A century of prosperity, peace, and proceduralism has produced citizens who expect democracy to function without their virtue, discipline, or attention. {my emphasis} In the late 19th century, too, parliamentary systems grew sclerotic, elites grew complacent, and publics grew cynical. Then came the First World War, which swept away the old regimes.“
More:
“ The deeper cause, or one of them, is the mismatch between democratic time and the world’s growing complexity. Modern democracies face problems—climate change, migration, AI regulation, aging, fiscal sustainability—with long time horizons and a planetary scale. They’re governed by institutions that respond to short-term and local electoral incentives. The result is a widening gap between what needs to be done and what can be done democratically.”
And there’s nothing that really can be done about this. When you have Ivy Leaguers who apparently are unable to sustain the attention span to get through books like the volume you just mentioned by West, well that’s it. Game over. Not merely do we lack the genetic means to maintain democratic governance – to allude to a remark Jacques made to an earlier essay of yours – we seem to lack the spiritual and moral foundations as well. We’re at the end of an age, which will require secular and religious Benedict Options to sustain us as we decline and then rebuild.
Very sobering thoughts. Thanks for the link to the other McCain. Also, could you provide a link to the Berlinski essay. I have read some of her father’s work, and it seems the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.
Here is the link to the essay Jim Reibel by Berlinski: https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/france-loses-another-prime-minister I think she’s doing very good work featuring international journalism that often goes underneath the radar, again from a classical liberal perspective.
Thanks, Jason! I see that you have inspired a thoughtful reply by Malcolm. Many thanks to you both. I will share with others.
Best to you both.!