New books by Kevin Williamson and by Tim Kane and Glenn Hubbard. Both take as their premise the thesis that the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal course. In The End Is Near and It’s Going to be Awesome, Williamson treats this as an opportunity, while in Balance, Kane and Hubbard treat it as a threat. Perhaps it would be appropriate at some point to jointly review them at length.
If I might boil the Kane-Hubbard book down to one sentence, it would be that without a balanced budget amendment to avert fiscal collapse, America will lose its great power status. I can imagine conservatives, thinking in terms of the civilization-barbarism axis, nodding firmly in agreement. However, by the same token, I can picture progressives and libertarians shrugging with indifference.
Williamson appears to be in the latter category. So far (I am less than 1/3rd finished), the book is assembling a standard array of libertarian arguments. Anyone who already resonates to the freedom-coercion axis is bound to like it. My guess is that Williamson is headed toward an embrace of what I have called civil societarianism. So far, it looks as though he is arguing for views that I share, although he expresses them with greater certitude.
If you think of a central government as a medeival construct from the times when centralizing decision-making may have made sense, then you probably want to starve the beast along the civilization-barbarism axis too
I hope I haven’t expressed too much certitude! I haven’t intended any of my arguments to be dogmatic; it is a shortcoming of my writing that I often seem more sure of myself than I am.