Partisan politics aside, what we are witnessing is the collapse of the welfare state. It is happening here and in Europe. Regardless of what party is in power, the reality is that we cannot remain on our current course. We will have to make some very painful decisions and the longer we wait, the more painful they will be.
Those decisions will have to be made in the context of what we perceive the role of government to be. The Left has created a growing culture of dependency on government. They will resist cuts in the entitlement and welfare programs for both political and philospohical reasons. Our founding documents will come under the greatest stress in our history because the Left sees them as an impediment to their agenda. The Left will try to keep the welfare state going a little longer by increasing taxes and reducing defense expenditures, i.e., the classical guns versus butter battle we have seen played out in Europe. The strategy may work in the short term and be to their political advantage, but the in the long term it is doomed to failure just like the bailouts in Greece.
The GOP establishment has failed to address the issue in terms of its larger context, i.e., the role of government. Instead, they are framing the issues in terms of making the welfare state work more efficiently and effectively. They had to be drawn kicking and screaming into supporting Ryan's plan to change Medicare, which really is not that radical. None of our current Presidential candidates are really discussing rolling back the welfare state. Newt and Rick have expressed their support of the prescription drug program, a $7.2 trillion unfunded liability. Mitt has Romneycare, which says a lot about how he views the role of government. I recall Daniel Hannan at CPAC paraphrasing Mark Twain, that if all you have is a hammer (government spending) then everything (problems) starts to look like a nail.
What I fear will happen is that nothing will be done until a real crisis develops (similar to Greece) and by that time it is probably too late. The economic, political, and human costs could rend the fabric of our society and result in the loss of individual liberties and personal freedoms. The politicians prefer their short term survival to the long term interests of this country. Our political leadership has failed us and ultimately, we the public deserve most of the blame for being uninformed and disengaged.
Good analysis and exposition. What we’re talking about here in a larger sense is civilizational collapse. In addition to the collapse of the Western welfare state and financial bubble, both Islamic and Chinese civilization are facing existential crises as well.
A lot of the horrors which will soon be manifesting themselves in the Islamic world will be the result of famine and demographic pressures exacerbated by a religion/ideology incapable of coping with them. Many observers believe China’s vaunted economy is precarious and hollow too.
And as you’ve described so well in many previous threads, we’re facing our own catastrophic demographic invasion here also.
We are indeed living in interesting times.
I don't put it as eloquently as you but Americans have been too fat and happy. Obama has gotten their attention! Hopefully they have waken up in time!