A fascinating read: The End of the American "Special Interest State" - Granite Grok

A fascinating read: The End of the American “Special Interest State”

This is a really interesting article: "The Coming of the Fourth American Republic," by James DeLong. He argues that America is in the midst of a fourth great "institutional upheaval." The first three such upheavals—which seem to occur roughly on a 70-year cycle—were the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression. Each of them gave birth to a "different type" of American Republic.

Today we are are in the midst of the fourth such upheaval. It will destroy the "Special Interest State" (which came out of Roosevelt’s New Deal and his Great Depression). Says DeLong…

"The needs of the Special Interest State have also come to dominate electoral politics. Both parties have become alliances of special interests. The focus of conflict is on the fact that most people belong to more than one group, and so electoral contests focus on emphasizing one or another group identity. Only a small band of sort-of Republicans holds out—lonely free marketers reading the Wall Street Journal by flames kindled from old issues of The Public Interest—regarded as amusingly quaint by the other players."

….

"As a free market man, I see the Democrat Party as consisting of a collection of parasites on the productive economy that has lost any capacity to understand that they all depend on a healthy host. The groups regard the economy as a commons, and each is determined to loot as much as possible for as long as possible, regardless of the long term. Democrats make corresponding claims about the Republicans, of course."

….

"We are in a crisis of legitimacy….Over the past few years, political winners have become increasingly aggressive, culminating in President Obama’s recent “We won” as an assertion of an unlimited mandate. Losers have become increasingly restive, ready to attack the legitimacy of the winners’ victory. Bush, in particular, was the target of an amazing and consistent campaign of de-legitimizing, and the opposition to Obama is on a hair trigger."

What will come out of this fourth great institutional upheaval? Unclear. Read all about it HERE. It’s a fascinating read.

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