Morning Ed: Politics {2018.02.22.Th}

Chip Daniels says:

So, in non-Trump, non-guns issues;
I’m still processing thoughts from a few links I was exposed to here on OT.

First, Shadi Hamid writing in The Atlantic about Submission, the book by Houllebecq;

Then Park MacDougald in American Affairs about Millenials (h/t Jaybird);

Then Dreher in The American Conservative writing about Marion Le Pen at CPAC;

I’m sensing a common theme here, of a critique of liberalism coming from a non-economic front, from a perspective that isn’t necessarily white ethno-centrism.

Shadi writes of liberalism in the way Haidt does, the modern faith of “anywheres”, those educated Western cosmopolitan people that are not rooted in a particular culture.

Dreher remarks that Le Pen’s speech illustrates a sharp divide between the ethical postures of European Catholicism and American Protestantism, of individual liberty versus a communitarian ethos:
“Without nation, and without family, the limits of the common good, natural law, and collective morality disappears, as the reign of egoism continues.”

Park MacDougald explores the angst of Millenials, who live in that liberal world of endless free choice, endless freedom, endless insecurity.

I haven’t formulated a complete thesis yet, but I am sensing that we are witnessing a very big tectonic shift in our politics.
The 20th century was marked by the epic struggle of two competing economic theories, but I am thinking that our politics is increasingly defined by the terms and issues that the post-Boomer generations are dealing with.
The splintering of blood families into sub-nuclear units of single parents or adult singles, the rise of economic insecurity, the disappearance of mass industrial work, the acceptance of same sex relationships, the collapse of faith in traditional mainstream religions all add up to something new.

Conservatives at CPAC may genuflect to Reagan, but who really looks at the Reaganesque model of suburban 1950s familiy as something that holds meaning? Does even Ben Shapiro think he is going to be a a breadwinner dad with a stay at home wife and 2.5 kids?

But even among young left wing people, who really imagines we will have a nationalized system of heavy industry like postwar Britain?

The post Boomer generations are trying to create meaning, but so far nothing seems to be emerging.Report