The Hungarian Model
The shining city on a hill was supposed to replace remote big government with a community of energetic and compassionate citizens, all engaged in a project of national renewal. But nothing held the city together. It was hollow at the center, a collection of individuals all wanting more. Free America measured civic health by gross domestic product.
... See moreGeorge Packer • Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
The result of all these trends is an odd distortion in our perception of what governments can and should do, and a stunted imagination in relation to what it could be.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
These three forces—technology, economics, identity—together almost always generate backlash that produces a new politics. Human beings can absorb only so much change so fast. The old politics, inherited from a prior era, often cannot keep pace. Politicians scramble to adjust, modifying their views and finding new coalitions. The result is reform an
... See moreFareed Zakaria • Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present
The quality of Free America’s leaders steadily deteriorated—falling from Reagan to Gingrich to Ted Cruz, from William F. Buckley to Ann Coulter to Sean Hannity—with no bottom.
George Packer • Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
On the left and the right, people are losing trust in their institutions. It’s this loss of trust, both in our institutions and in our ability to change our societies, that should worry us more than the rise of any specific leader or movement.