The more I think about it, the more I feel that the solution to this crisis lies in the British Monarchy. Somebody has to drag young Prince William aside and explain to him the facts of life, pump his head full of Teddy Roosevelt, Montesquieu, Rousseau, de Tocqueville and Rand, so he can go about saving England, and England can once again save the World.
I don’t know about England saving the world. Henry VIII was probably the “most absolute” of the absolute monarchs, because he got rid of the one balancing force, the Church, and insisted on a level of personal loyalty from his subjects that not even the looniest Continental monarch had even thought of receiving up till then. The ideas of our Founders on liberty came from a variety of sources, particularly French and Spanish thinkers who had devoted much thought to the concept of the consent of the governed.
Furthermore, I think a point could be made that the British Socialist movement starting from the turn of the last century has had a lot of influence on US ways of thinking about society. It was in general not a revolution-based movement, but one that just had the state - as Mark Steyn suggests - gradually absorbing more and more of the individual’s responsibilities and “taking care” of him.
The Brits did have some good economic philosophers way back when, of course, but modern British society is already a lot more socialist and dysfunctional than ours.
...so he can go about saving England, and England can once again save the World.
The royals haven't run England for a long time.