ET VITAM VENTURI SAECULI. Cato's Brink Lindsey has been thinking about political alignments that have outlived their usefulness.

But the real problem with our politics today is that the prevailing ideological categories are intellectually exhausted. Conservatism has risen to power only to become squalid and corrupt, a Nixonian mélange of pandering to populist prejudices and distributing patronage to well-off cronies and Red Team constituencies. Liberalism, meanwhile, has never recovered from its fall from grace in the mid-'60s. Ever since, it has lacked the vitality to do more than check conservative excesses--and obstruct legitimate, conservative-led progress. As a governing philosophy, liberalism has been moribund: When Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton managed to win the White House, they did so only by successfully avoiding the liberal stigma.

Today's ideological turmoil, however, has created an opening for ideological renewal--specifically, liberalism's renewal as a vital governing philosophy. A refashioned liberalism that incorporated key libertarian concerns and insights could make possible a truly progressive politics once again--not progressive in the sense of hewing to a particular set of preexisting left-wing commitments, but rather in the sense of attuning itself to the objective dynamics of U.S. social development. In other words, a politics that joins together under one banner the causes of both cultural and economic progress.

Conservative fusionism, the defining ideology of the American right for a half-century, was premised on the idea that libertarian policies and traditional values are complementary goods. That idea still retains at least an intermittent plausibility--for example, in the case for school choice as providing a refuge for socially conservative families. But an honest survey of the past half-century shows a much better match between libertarian means and progressive ends. Most obviously, many of the great libertarian breakthroughs of the era--the fall of Jim Crow, the end of censorship, the legalization of abortion, the liberalization of divorce laws, the increased protection of the rights of the accused, the reopening of immigration--were championed by the political left.

Furthermore, it has become increasingly clear that capitalism's relentless dynamism and wealth-creation--the institutional safeguarding of which lies at the heart of libertarian concerns--have been pushing U.S. society in a decidedly progressive direction. The civil rights movement was made possible by the mechanization of agriculture, which pushed blacks off the farm and out of the South with immense consequences. Likewise, feminism was encouraged by the mechanization of housework. Greater sexual openness, as well as heightened interest in the natural environment, are among the luxury goods that mass affluence has purchased. So, too, are secularization and the general decline in reverence for authority, as rising education levels (prompted by the economy's growing demand for knowledge workers) have promoted increasing independence of mind.

Yet progressives remain stubbornly resistant to embracing capitalism, their great natural ally. In particular, they are unable to make their peace with the more competitive, more entrepreneurial, more globalized U.S. economy that emerged out of the stagflationary mess of the 1970s. Knee-jerk antipathy to markets and the creative destruction they bring continues to be widespread, and bitter denunciations of the unfairness of the system, mixed with nostalgia for the good old days of the Big Government/Big Labor/Big Business triumvirate, too often substitute for clear thinking about realistic policy options.

Hence today's reactionary politics. Here, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the rival ideologies of left and right are both pining for the '50s. The only difference is that liberals want to work there, while conservatives want to go home there.

Virginia Postrel concurs in part and dissents in part.

But the alliance Brink proposes requires three difficult shifts:

1) A commitment on both sides to a safety net for the poor but not to pursuing economic equality for its own sake. This is the easiest part and has largely happened already, despite protests from both hard-core levellers and anti-transfer libertarians. But many of the loudest Democrats and libertarians (small-l, the relevant ones) won't go along.

2) An abandonment of Herbert Croly-style technocracy as the governing philosophy of the Democratic Party, not only in economics but in social policy, where "centrists" like Hillary Clinton tend to confuse governing with raising children. Technocracy long ago lost its ideological oomph, but Democrats have a knee-jerk commitment to regulation. Today's good government liberals generally pay homage to tolerance, pluralism, and market processes. The trick is to draw connections between those values and specific policies.

3) A deliberate resolve to form a dynamist alliance at a time when "progressives" are increasingly redefining themselves as stasist populists--trade protection has become an ideological position, for instance, rather than a favor for special interests--and many self-styled "small government" supporters argue vociferously for vast expansions of police and planning powers to limit immigration. In this regard, I am more encouraged by the defenses of trade coming out of places like TNR and Slate than I am by the fawning on Jim Webb coming out of Reason. (The guy even wants to bring back the draft, which used to be a deal breaker for libertarians.).

If it's going to happen, such an alliance can only start among honest intellectuals who are not interested in scoring partisan points.

Dan Drezner observes,

Again, however, Lindsey does omit the successes in microeconomic policy -- deregulation, welfare reform, declines in marginal tax rates, shifts in antitrust policy, the 1986 tax reform -- that conservative fusionism produced in the past few decades.

He has additional commentary and links to further reaction.

I've had some opportunities to do a bit more reading, and Mr Lindsey's essay and these reactions will help me put a few more book reviews together. I've been a bit busy with end-of-semester projects but hope to get a few think pieces up over the weekend.

SIFTING AND WINNOWING. Cato's Brink Lindsey has now expanded his meditation on political alignments that have outlived their usefulness into a book, The Age of Abundance. It has both a super-title, Why the Culture Wars Made Us More Libertarian, which may or may not be accurate, and a sub-title, How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture. This Book Review N^o. 8 reminds readers that not everybody views that transformation the same way (consider Robert Reich or Patrick Buchanan or Robert Kuttner.) In places, the argument strikes me as strained: he repeats the same formula about the Aquarians taking advantage of plentitude while questioning the market economy that makes it possible while the Evangelicals saw sin in the plentitude while defending the market economy (perhaps because it was not communistic?) The development of his argument identifies some of the same strains in the New Deal - Pax Americana establishment that Strauss and Howe's Fourth Turning identify, and many of the elaborations are the same. What's different is that Mr Lindsey envisions a permanent synthesis of libertarian notions (greater tolerance for differences in ethnicity and belief systems and greater reliance on emergent systems such as markets) while Strauss and Howe see libertarian attitudes as popular during a time of decay of the old social order, but put aside once the new social order establishes itself, which requires a severe secular crisis, often a war or a rebellion, to remind people of their fundamental reasons for cooperating with others.

We have not yet seen such a secular crisis, despite the best efforts of seekers of political power to pin that label on Islamofascism or environmental decay or for the n-th time, the fatal collapse of capitalism. That noted, it is difficult not to like a book that includes, at page 289, this.

Nevertheless, the fact that many Americans have been unable to take proper advantage of the new economy's immense possibilities. That fact must be considered a major disappointment -- and one that is not easily remedied. For while economic incentives matter, sometimes culture matters more. And many Americans have been raised in a working-class culture that does not sufficiently encourage education or long-term planning. As a result, they lack the skills that are now so highly rewarded -- and what is worse, they lack the capacity to develop those skills. Until relatively recently, working-class culture was consistent with upward mobility. But things have changed, and low-skill, high-paying jobs are increasingly a thing of the past. Consequently, the anti-intellectual mentality that remains deeply engrained in large segments of the American populace has become a socioeconomic dead end.

So let it be with the Rust Belt.

Elsewhere, Mr Lindsey extends his argument to the underclass, noting a connection between the absence of "middle-class skills" in that population and its prolonged misery. That squares with a contention of mine, that misplaced emphasis on eliminating hegemonic biases and other mushy-headed substitutes for real learning keep the poor poor.

(Cross-posted at the Fifty Book Challenge).

FIFTIES NOSTALGIA TO THE RIGHT OF ME. I suspect that Robert Kuttner might have had Patrick Buchanan's Day of Reckoning in mind in his anticipation of the "know-nothings" gaining influence as globalization imposes adjustment costs on low-skill workers in a country with a comparative advantage in skill-intensive industries. (There's method in my madness, putting Mr Kuttner at Book Review N^o. 34 to set up Mr Buchanan for Book Review N^o. 35. ) I'll leave the trashing of the know-nothingisms to Ben Johnson, writing for Front Page, on the premise that the true believers can do a better job of policing their ranks. The Puritan in me finds amusement in the proudly Catholic, brawlingly Irish Mr Buchanan grumbling about the unassimilable habits of today's immigrants; the Volhynian draft resister in me cringes at his proposals to deny entry to today's equivalent of the mom with seven children in tow and five bucks in her pocket shipping out in steerage. (Clearly Mr Buchanan hasn't taken the time to read and understand my work, in collaboration with Eli Katz, on the optimality of immigration amnesties. Another paper in press! Yessss!!)

That noted, Mr Buchanan presents some of the same elements of nostalgia for the administered oligopolies of the 1950s and 1960s that Mr Kuttner misses, such as unionized blue-collar jobs, monopoly rents divided among shareholders, union members, and the tax collector, and no annoying hedge-fund managers who couldn't make a clean hole with a bit-and-brace looking for undervalued assets to strip, and no former peasants in exotic countries willing to do a better job bolting a car together for less money. And he persists in claiming that infant-industry protectionism made industrial development possible. Brink Lindsey illuminates the post-hoc nature of that argument.

Some of Mr Buchanan's arguments about imperial overstretch are more persuasive. He's never been a fan of intervention in the internal affairs of Moslem countries, and one of his earlier works is A Republic, Not an Empire. He also suggests that U.S., and by extension, the Atlantic Alliance's policy toward Russia has been unnecessarily harsh. What if, he asks, Mikhail Gorbachev had offered at the 1986 Reykjavik summit, to disarm, terminate the Warsaw Pact, and devolve the Soviet Union into fifteen countries in exchange for a promise that the Atlantic Alliance not be expanded to include Poland or the Captive Nations? I'm not qualified to evaluate the offer. Yes, the United States has done relatively little for the Russians, who got rid of Communism on their own initiative. On the other hand, Poland and the Baltic States have permanent interests that transcend Communism: before Stalin there was Alexander I, before Alexander I there was Peter the Great, before Peter the Great ... (where's the Russian history collection when I need it?) Day of Reckoning's observations on international affairs might merit further discussion. The industrial and immigration policy parts are unlikely to change many minds.

REDISCOVERING THE MEDIAN VOTER.

American Thinker contributor John Green responds, favorably, to Ruy "Liberal Patriot" Teixeira's wisdom.  "Democrats have embraced radical positions, because leftists have oversized influence on the party. That influence is driving the Democrat party to lose touch with the normies, who are still the vast majority of American voters."  That column distills from three long essays.  In one, Mr Teixeira suggests Democrats Must Move to the Center on Cultural Issues.

The idea that Democrats can just turn up the volume on economic issues and ignore their unpopular stances on sociocultural issues is absurd. Culture matters and the issues to which they are connected matter. They are a hugely important part of how voters assess who is on their side and who is not; whose philosophy they can identify with and whose they can’t.

Instead, for many working-class voters to seriously consider their economic pitch, Democrats need to convince them that they are not looked down on, that their concerns are taken seriously and that their views on culturally freighted issues will not be summarily dismissed as unenlightened. With today’s Democratic Party, as we have seen, this is very difficult. Resistance has been, and remains, stiff to any compromises that involve moving to the center on these issues, a problem that talking more about economic issues simply ignores.

Put simply, end the faculty lounge politics and name and shame the deplorable shamers.

In a second, he suggests Democrats Must Promote an Abundance Agenda.  That used to be second nature, the so-called progressives were in favor of what they called "broadly shared prosperity," never mind that they dissipated the Victory Dividend on all sorts of technocratic follies.  Mr Teixeira understands that prosperity can mean making better use of what you have.  "Abundance means just what you think it means: more stuff, more growth, more opportunity, being able to easily afford life’s necessities with a lot left over. In short, nicer, genuinely comfortable lives for all."  Markets deliver that sort of abundance, and wring out waste and resource depletion along the way.  Bragging about passing legislation sounds hollow in contrast.

The idea is for Biden and administration surrogates to fan out across the country to give voters the good news about the investments in their three big bills (the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the CHIPS and Science Act and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)) and how they are bringing/will bring prosperity and good jobs to their communities.

It's not as if we've forgotten how previous "transformative" legislation has run afoul of the Law of Unintended Consequences and other reality checks.

In a third essay, he commits heresy.  Democrats Must Embrace Patriotism and Liberal Nationalism.  Yes, those scurrying feet were the Obama types heading toward the nearest fainting couch.  "Nor is it unknown for progressive commentators to grudgingly admit there are—or at least have been—some good things about America before they return to their preferred theme of the country’s abundant and appalling sins. But they just don’t seem very enthusiastic about the actually-existing country of America."  How can you govern a country you don't like?  As an occupying power would?  That will not turn out well.  "[Democrats] will if they want to become once again the party of the ordinary American, rather than the cultural elites who would find all this stuff distinctly uncool, if not outright reactionary. We shall see."

What's interesting is that Mr Teixeira draws heavily on work by Noah Smith and Brink Lindsey, not your usual sort of Democrat court intellectuals. With both major parties seemingly in thrall to their most vocal fringes, all either major party has to do is come off as not crazy, and that's a quality not forthcoming from leaders of either at the moment.

ROUND AND ROUND ON OUTSOURCING AND GLOBALIZATION. Econ Log points to two policy papers, by Brink Lindsey and Dan Drezner, both suggesting that the sky is noit falling; indeed, some people really ought to take a deep breath. Professor Drezner:

It is also worth remembering that many predictions come from management consultants who are eager to push the latest business fad. Many of these consulting firms are themselves reaping commissions from outsourcing contracts. Much of the perceived boom in outsourcing stems from companies' eagerness to latch onto the latest management trends; like Dell and Lehman, many will partially reverse course once the hidden costs of offshore outsourcing become apparent.

There is already a comment and rejoinder on Professor Drezner's site. Sean at The American Mind offers additional links, including one that suggests the principle of comparative advantage is not dead. (Of course not, marginal costs can be compared, and either they are all the same, or they are different. If they are different, the lowest among them is the comparative advantage provided some regularity conditions hold. Weierstrass I'm not, but this argument I can make.)

The intellectual arguments are not sufficient to convince everybody, however. The people of Reading, Pennsylvania, are discovering tradeoffs: "''We've enjoyed the fruits of cheap labor for so long that we want it both ways: We want good jobs and good wages, and we want everything cheap." This is doable, if the technology is right and the people can work with it. The people of Bangalore, India get it. (Read and understand the article. Those of you who complain about 500 applications for one temporary lectureship in a community college may have a point, but the article reinforces this lesson about failures to balance production and consumption of some kinds of degree.)

There remains, however, the expectation of another way. In my mail today was an announcement of a presentation by Professor John French, the director of the Duke Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Here's what's on offer.

In late 2002, Luis Inacio Lula da Sliva became President of Brazil ... Lula's rise was possible only after the Brazilian people fought to end the military dictatorship supported by the United States ... Lula was born in poverty, and his current government is searching for alternatives to U.S. strategies of "globalization" that have increased rather than decreased poverty. The rise of the Brazilian Workers Party, which was built with a base of militant workers, socialists, and adherents to "Liberation Theology" eventually captured the hopes and dreams of the citizenry of Brazil, who hope indeed for a new world with a new agenda that eliminates poverty and desperation.

In twenty years, would you rather live in Bangalore or in Rio? Developing ...

GET A GRIP. That's Milwaukee's Charlie Sykes advising his listeners not to get down on bad war news, or giddy on good war news. Brink Lindsey has some thoughts along those lines. Do not confuse a war with the basketball tournament. There is no punter who will sell you Iraq and 40 points.