Not Within Shouting Distance

There was an interesting article by Adam Gopnik in the September 12 New Yorker entitled "Decline, Fall, Rinse, Repeat." It was a criticism of the expanding genre of history writing, Declinism. Declinist books have been around forever. They are always prophesying some impending disaster like the Population Bomb, or a Nuclear Winter, or Class Warfare, or some other apocalyptic vision that is sure to spell our planet's doom in the near future. Then when the apocalypse has for whatever reason not happened, a new wave of Declinist books hits the stands explaining why the last prophesy of doom was wrong, or ill-timed, and why this new apocalypse detailed in the new book is the real thing.

According to Gopnik, the best Declinist book was written in 1918 by Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West. Spengler's hypothesis was that there is always a cycle of decline and growth. It is as inevitable as the change of seasons. Furthermore, western civilization reached its high point somewhere during the 13th century and has been in decline ever since.

It is difficult to look at our world as it currently exists and not agree to a certain extent with Spengler. But that is not the subject of this reaction. Gopnik goes on to talk about a number of other Declinist books and ends up focusing on Friedman and Mandelbaum's new book, That Used to Be Us. This work focuses on recent history, the ravages of 9/11, the Islamic threat, the paralyzed U.S. government, the world wide economic collapse, and basically wonders why we all can't just get along (Please note that this is a one reading knee jerk reaction to Gopnik's article).

The things we all want and need seem obvious to Friedman and Mandelbaum: good schools, safe roads and bridges, efficient airports, universal healthiness, no poor people starving in the streets, a clean environment. They have an almost impossible time envisioning anyone disagreeing with any of this. And yet history tells us that we have always had a large group of individuals who don't want these things, not if it means broadening the reach of government. The fact of the matter is that many individuals are perfectly willing to sacrifice bridge safety, air safety, better-informed children, faster, more efficient forms of transformations like bullet trains, and the like in support of their undying belief that we should give government as little money as possible. If that means the government will default, so much the better. It is, for instance, quite possible that republicans in Congress will block disaster relief funds for the east coast rather than cede more power to the central government. It is hard for us to imagine, but it is true.

"Annoying liberals," Gopnik writes, "is a pleasure well worth paying for. As a recent study in the social sciences shows, if energy use in a household is monitored so that you can watch yourself saving money every month by using less, self-identified conservatives will actually use and spend more, apparently as a way of showing their scorn for liberal pieties."

Protestants in the seventeenth century hated the magnificent baroque cathedrals of Rome because they were symbols of an earthly power they despised. Conservatives hate fast trains and efficient airports and beautifully engineered bridges for the same reason.

What does all this mean? We are so polarized that we are not even within shouting distance of each other. The kind of thinking and innovation that lead to a growing civilization have become an impossibility. Whatever trends will take us over and lead us back to prosperity seem to be happening in Asia. There is no intellectual room for them here.