|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Their Pessimism and Ours
| Article
# : |
14773 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1988 |
3,054 Words |
| Author
: |
David Brooks
David Brooks is book editor of The Wall Street Journal. |
Americans did not get too excited when they learned that the human race was about to be asphyxiated by carbon monoxide, and the impending revolution by the Third World against the First World did not animate them either. In the 1970s, the average citizen did not exactly rend his garments when he learned that the earth was about to run out of oil, and the overpopulation explosion left him similarly unmoved. The spiritual malaise that we heard so much about in the late seventies was not enough to incite the citizenry to uproar, and the "Age of Limits," which descended upon us in the early eighties, was also a dud. But now it is 1988, and America is in a state of permanent decline. Perhaps this will be the thing that gets the populace activated. Maybe this time the liberals have a winner.
Ruminations on our decline are everywhere. Joel Kurtzman of The New York Times has written a book, The Decline and Crash of the American Economy, in which he concludes, "We sit on the edge of a very steep precipice, and the ledge beneath us is giving way.” Kurtzman's Times colleague Tom Wicker restates the conventional wisdom with perfect pitch in a recent column entitled "Not So Bright a Future.” He advises us not to look optimistically toward the future but to adopt a "new realism" and focus our attention regretfully on the past.
The New Republic declares that it is "evening in America.” Barbara Tuchman says President Reagan is Nero, fiddling while Rome burns.
David Calleo of Johns Hopkins says the United States "is a hegemony in decay, set on a course that points to an ignominious end.” Richard Rosecrance of Cornel predicts that Japan will be the world's major political power by 2010. Newsweek, which has become the barometer of conventional wisdom, dedicated a cover to America's decline. "For America," Newsweek warned, "adapting to the loss of U.S. pre-eminence will pose unprecedented challenges."
Martin Tolchin of the New York Times and his wife, Susan--charter members of the Society of the Perpetually Alarmed--are worked up by the menace of foreign investment. Others worry about the trade deficit, or the federal deficit, or the foreign debt, or what they claim is our declining standard living. Lester Thurow predicts that in fifty years U.S. GNP will be half that of the leading industrial nation.
In 1987 a young man named Walter Russell Mead wrote a book, his first, called Mortal Splendor: The American Empire in Transition. Despite its
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
