This Is Our America

To quote a fellow blogger,

"To quote Adlai Stevenson, who was quoting G.B. Shaw, who probably was quoting
Thomas Jefferson, who was quoting Joseph de Maistre, people get the government
they deserve."

God help us, then, if this is the government we deserve. In 2004, an article in The Economist framed the Presidential election as a choice between incoherence (i.e.: Kerry and the Democrats) and incompetence in the form of Bush and the Congressional Republicans, before coming down very reluctantly on the side of incoherence and Senator Kerry. About a week ago, the magazine noted that, since then, the Democrats have become even more incoherent than they were in 2004; while the Republicans have displayed incompetence beyond their worst imaginings. "America deserves better" was the article's closing note.

We cannot help but agree. It is no longer possible to ignore the dismal reality of Democratic incoherence; of Republican incompetence; or of the dire risks that these defects in our leadership are imposing, with ever increasing stakes, on both ourselves and the rest of the world.

Over the last 30 years, the political culture of America has grown increasingly divided, increasingly irrational, and increasingly preoccupied with zero-sum battles over "social issues" defined by conflicting norms, values, spiritual beliefs, and collective aspirations. The cultural framework in which these battles are fought is growing increasingly tribal, and ever more venomous,to the detriment of the Republic and everyone in it.

On the subject of Democratic incoherence, few examples are needed. . . and few are available, since it's in the nature of incoherence to be elusive when subjected to research. The best commentary on the state of the Democratic platform was a quip by Senator Barrack Obama (D-IL), who jokingly protested that, "They say Democrats don't stand for anything. That's patently untrue. We do stand for anything."

But if the Democrats dither on their principles and values, the Republicans dither on their actions. There is no need, I think, to cite the litany of governmental failures that have marred the past 5 years; and most of the significant ones have been branded into the public's consciousness in the form of the "signature" images of this era in American politics, which betoken a kind of tragic incompetence, the kind that always costs dignity, and often costs lives.

This is our America. A nation that once launched a dozen men at the moon and brought them all home in one piece is now incapable of reaching low earth orbit without fearing catastrophe's blade. A nation that conquered and rebuilt half of Europe and the Pacific Rim simultaneously is now incapable of restoring the power grid in Baghdad. A nation that built the national highway system, the national rail system, the national telecommunications system, and the hoover dam. . . . has become so awash in corruption and patronage that even the approval of prescription drugs has become politicized, has become so immersed in myopic relativism that the conclusions of religion are being substituted for the conclusions of science. . . by the political appointees who oversee our science agencies.

All that, and much more, is the price we pay for dismissing the potential of collective solutions, distrusting technological progress, and disparaging the legitimacy of objective observation and logical reasoning. We work harder, we save less, we own less land than our parents did. We delay having our children, and even so, when we do, we have less time for them than our own parents were able to give us. We carry vastly heavier burdens of debt than our parents did, and our children will most probably carrier heaver burdens still. Even more ominously, it seems increasingly possible that our lives will be shorter and less healthy than those of our parents. . . and the implications for our children are starker yet.