Andrew Sullivan recently expressed his doubts about the state of America in a recent post:
My own view is that America’s crisis is a very deep one. The markets are reflecting the fact that seven years of Bush have added $32 trillion to future debt, and there is no one able to either raise revenues or slash entitlements to get us back to fiscal sanity. Iraq has shown that America’s imperial burden is becoming greater and greater even as her major rivals, China and Russia, get stronger and stronger. The threat of Jihadism is as salient today as it was in 2001. Climate change is a challenge the political system seems utterly unable to confront. The cultural, racial and religious divisions tearing America apart are as powerful as we allow them to be. Another election campaign that actually deepens this polarization will render it even harder to overcome.
I fear dark times ahead. Which is why I favor McCain and Obama. Both can rally their own supporters while appealing beyond them. We need that unifying potential – not because unity is always a good thing. But because sometimes it’s necessary. Like: now.
Rod Dreher, commenting, states that
Andrew does have a point in that both Obama and McCain, for somewhat different reasons, would be the kind of president who could rally the people in a difficult spot. But neither man represents the kind of changes that America really needs to make in the face of the critical issues now before the country. Then again, who does? That politician doesn’t yet exist because the awareness of how precarious our position is does not exist, at least not widely in the population.
In a recent trip out to DC, seeing a number of old friends from college, I was surprised to hear so many of them voice support for Huckabee. I understand the enthusiasm, which Rod Dreher has shared this last year, for a candidate who challenges the Reagan hegemony in the GOP. However, I remain sceptical that Huckabee is really doing things beyond party politics as usual. In other words, he like so many others, seems to shape-shift in subtle ways in order to appeal to as many voters as possible. Perhaps that’s not fair–but I really believe it’s a slippery slope, and going down it, the politician inevitably becomes embroiled in politics for politics sake.
What I really want to see is a discussion about the issues that are in fact the most important, issues that seem to be ignored by most candidates. In fact, I wonder if they are really thinking of these at all: our perilous economic situation (e.g. see this article by Pat Buchanon) where the U.S. continues to increase her debt to foreign lenders, and the facile solution of encouraging consumers to spend more and more (frivolously, I might add) to stimulate the economy; the increasing threat of technology and media-driven modes of discourse, particularly upon the youth in their schooling; the descent into militarism of our Foreign Policy; the increasing size, power, and seizure of subsidiary levels of responsibility and initiative by the federal government; the dominance of popular culture and the popularity and imposition of what is most banal, vulgar, and trite, and the way pop-culture has become THE pedagogical force in America.
These are the central political problems I see. Note, I did not mention abortion, the expunging of Christianity from the public square, or the aggresive polity of the homosexual agenda. I have lost confidence that real policy change will ever happen on these issues at the federal level. (Can someone try to persuade me that this is not the case?)
The threats of biotechnology and its assaults on bioethical norms seems to be an issue on the fence. I’m not sure if the government can stop this any more. But they might be able to.
I don’t think Huckabee, or any of the other candidates, really think about, let alone talk about, these critical issues. Like Dreher, I am persuaded that we are in a civilizational spiral and decline, and the best thing to do may very well be the MacIntyrean option of creating small communities (or in Pope Benedict’s words, “islands and oases”) where authentic “political” life can happen. Is politics on the national level still viable? I’m not sure. But I feel more and more that debates and arguments about the differences between presidential candidates aren’t all that critical anymore, especially when most of the candidates are blind to the deeper issues.
Except Ron Paul. He still seems the only candidate willing to enter into debate about (at least some) those deeper issues. At least, that’s my opinion.
But the fundamental thing seems to be, when sliding ever more rapidly into a “dark age”, do the outlines of political prudence suggest lines of action radically different from pretending that the status quo can be maintained?
January 23, 2008 at 8:15 pm
The American empire’s decline is dragging Western civilization into the abyss along with itself. It is obvious that civility, human decency, intellectual integrity and ordinary altruism will only be preserved in small enclaves; Pope Benedict is absolutely right about that, but the Catholic hierarchy so far lacks the courage to say forthrightly that the consumerist barbarism of American culture poses as serious a threat to Judaeo-Christian morality and civilization as communism or nazism ever did.
We know that John Paul II felt so, but mostly kept it to himself. I myself haven’t given up, however, on the “oracle in the Vatican,” and feel fairly confident that it will, eventually, be pushed to the wall by the emergence of consumerist-fascism that is being driven by American politics. What often amazes me about American Catholics, however, is the way their nationalism blinds them to how antithetical are the values of mass culture in America to Catholic spirituality and philosophy (which are as much the product of classical enlightenment as Jewish religion)–and how unwilling they are to notice how the seeds of that virulent culture were sewn by the perversion of Christianity known as Calvinism.
January 23, 2008 at 11:21 pm
prophets of doom………
January 24, 2008 at 1:19 am
dig,
couldn’t have said it better…
January 24, 2008 at 2:22 am
“Consumerist fascism”? No commentary on my part is needed.
January 24, 2008 at 3:30 am
“Consumerist fascism” is NOT the oxymoron you think it is, Mr. McClarey: it means being brainwashed, programmed or “educated” (i.e. “No Child Left Behind” ERADICATION of critical thinking) to “consume” mindlessly. (Never even wondered, have you, that on the “Nightly Business Report,” they never ask “What’s a citizen to do?” but, instead, “What’s the consumer to do? Never wondered, have you, how your governments–whether of the supposed “Right” or the supposed “Left”–encourages you to think of yourself as a sort of ever-”consuming” larvae?)
January 24, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Never wondered, have you, how your governments–whether of the supposed “Right” or the supposed “Left”–encourages you to think of yourself as a sort of ever-”consuming” larvae?
Hmmm. No, I never did notice that.
Of course, since I haven’t owned a TV for some time now, it’s a little hard to spend my evening watching the Nightly Business Report.
You could try that…
I’ll admit, it doesn’t free one from all consumerist tendencies. I still seem to buy a lot of books. But then, perhaps that helps with the critical thinking which public education is apparently assaulting. (That and avoiding public education for one’s offspring.)