USA as a “Failed Social Experiment”?

Some more…

Those who are advocating a more authoritarian government are naive if they think that conservatives or Christians will be in charge. In today’s cultural climate, they will not be the ones defining the “common good.” And if we had a different culture, which conservatives and Christians should indeed be striving to build, we would not need their authoritarianism.

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I think that the problem in all of these ideologies–conservative, libertarian, liberal, post-liberal, socialist, integralist, etc.–is utopianism, or at least utopian expectations. The human condition being what it is–namely, sinful–NO ideology is going to solve all of our problems. A political or economic system may sound ideal theoretically, but it will not work as advertised in this fallen world. Not only that, the followers of the ideological system will not be able to live up to their own high ideals and will tend to violate them once they get into power. Furthermore, none of these ideological systems can prevent or fully deal with the problems that will arise, such as epidemics or police brutality.

No system of government will survive when its leaders are unprincipled, corrupt, and/or inept. Even the ancient Greeks, who invented democracy, understood the inherent problems with democracy and “majority rule.” The history of the Greek polis is one of a constant pendulum swing between democracy and tyranny. At their worse, the demos ostracized and killed men of principle and virtue because these men refused to go along with the whims of the people. Instead, they chose men who would give them whatever they wanted, even if that meant the destruction of the polis.

The Romans demonstrated that even a republic cannot last when its leaders become unprincipled, corrupt and/or inept.

While the founders of our American government despised monarchy, they also did not like democracy and tried to incorporate enough elements of a republic into our government structure to act as a counterbalance. However, they, too, realized that our democratic republic would not last if its people and leaders were unprincipled, corrupt and/or inept.

Today, the rule of law is becoming more and more a theory and less and less a reality for many. Unless something changes, I fear we’re on the precipice of a quick, steep decline into tyranny, either of a demagogue or a dictator.

This article is short sighted and ill-informed. We have had a myriad of things, some under our control and some not under our control come together in the last 2 or so years. That does not say that 225 years of our republic is a failed state. We always need changes. I would also argue that socialism doesn’t solve the problem either. Go look at Europe. The inequalities are stark. I lived in France for a while. I have seen it and it is worse than the US. Go to places where there is more extreme socialism and those fail after a few decades (Venezula, Cuba, USSR…). What the socialist democrats like to throw out is the Nordic countries. There again, ill-informed. The Nordic countries are very far from socialism and in reality score much higher in terms of capitalistic society than the US does.

The article doesn’t take the position that the U.S. is a failed social experiment… or at least not more so than all the other social experiments. He’s mostly pushing back against the integralists who think it’s time to ditch classical liberal democracy and try a new authoritarianism.

I agree with Veith.

Every grasp for utopia ultimately seems to come up with… dystopia.