Better Red: When Public Whim Overtakes Established Order, Authority Turns Arbitrary (Essay‪)‬

EVERYONE'S WORST FEARS for America are coming true. The traditional Left sees increasing inequality and falling real wages for workers. The libertarian Right grows alarmed at the federal government's ever heavier hand in the economy--from bailouts to healthcare reform--and the steady erosion of civil liberties before the flood tide of the national-security state. Cultural conservatives, meanwhile, lament a toxic environment of competitive sex and recreational violence. Americans still enjoy freedom of a sort, but not old-fashioned economic or political liberty, only the chimeras of lifestyle choice. You can sleep with whomever you want, but there will be no legally binding commitments, and whether you keep your house or your children will be up to a judge. You can quit your job at any time, but good luck finding another. You can vote for the Republican or Democrat of your preference, and they will both give the country bigger government and more wars. Even which church to attend is a consumer choice, as self-interested and trivialized as which soft drink to buy. For all the fetishization of choice, Americans are taught by their institutions that there is only one way to live: casually, unconcernedly, without strong connections to anything but the provider state and its flag.