Neither Left nor Right Has Proper Remedy for America’s Illness

Government has a role in dealing with the challenges of globalization and automation, but these movements cannot fill the holes in our souls.

America is sick. Just about everybody recognizes it, and we didn’t need two more mass shootings to convince anybody of anything. Most Americans think the country is on the wrong track, despite a roaring economy. You can blame Donald Trump, but Americans have been unsatisfied with the country’s direction for most of the last two decades.

Amazingly, given the level of partisan animosity in this country, both sides see the problem much the same way: The country is disordered by selfishness, alienation, variously defined bigotries, inequality, and a lack of social solidarity. Even more bizarre, both the Right and the Left have very similar solutions in mind.

Both are very wrong.

On the right, a growing number of intellectuals see nationalism as the cure for what ails us. The Hudson Institute’s Christopher DeMuth argues that nationalism is an idea whose time has come (again) because it reminds us “of our dependence on one another.” He likens it to the religious “Great Awakenings” of the past. Catholic writer Sohrab Ahmari wants an awakening that delivers “order,” “social cohesion,” and policies aimed at the “Highest Good” — in the classical philosophic sense (summum bonum).

On the left, listen closely to the proselytizers of the new socialist awakening. You’ll notice that it has less to do with economics than a yearning for more a cooperative and egalitarian alternative to selfish capitalism, driven not by nationalism but government — which is “the only thing we all belong to” as a video at the 2012 Democratic Convention asserted.

The vocabulary they use is different, but the underlying indictment of the status quo is remarkably similar. Nationalism is an obscenity to the Left, and socialism is anathema for the Right, but a nationalizing or centralizing spirit suffuses both sides.