I’m reading Yuval Levin’s book, The Fractured Republic, and it’s very good. His main premise is that America has moved from a period of consolidated culture (1930s – mid-’60s) into one of diffusion, and both parties are trapped in nostalgia for their respective “glory days.” The Democrats pine for the mid-’50s through the ’60s (high percentage of unionized workers, civil rights protests, War on Poverty via federal programs, etc.), and the right wants to restore the Reagan years (tax cuts, deregulation, moral majority, etc.). He says it’s impossible for us to return to either vision of America, given our current diffuse culture and atomization.

Anyway, in his chapter “Subculture Wars,” he writes:

The problem we face is not the risk of cataclysm, but the acceptance of widespread despair and disorder in the lives of millions of our fellow citizens. We risk getting used to living in a society that denies a great many of its most vulnerable people the opportunity to thrive. Making the case against such acquiescence in the torpor and misery of so many would mean calling people’s attention to just what it these Americans are being denied – to the possibility of flourishing, and to its appeal.