SHATTERED CONSENSUS: THE RISE AND DECLINE OF AMERICA’S POSTWAR POLITICAL ORDER, James Piereson’s latest book, which streets today, is reviewed by Alan Wallace of the Pittsburgh Tribune:
Despite the book’s title, Piereson — president of the William E. Simon Foundation and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute — covers more than just the post-World War II period. And he’s hopeful because America has survived other such periods of political dysfunction.
He says the first culminated in the Civil War, resolving tensions over slavery and territorial matters that had begun to upset our young nation’s settled order around 1800. The second was forced by the Great Depression, which broke down the laissez-faire capitalist/industrialist order that arose after the Civil War. And now, America faces its third such crisis point, as the post-World War II consensus of the 1940s and 1950s, characterized by Keynesian economics and goals of full employment at home and containing communism and promoting freedom abroad, continues its erosion, which began during the 1960s.
Piereson says America, facing a stagnant economy and unsustainable expansion of government, its debt and its entitlement programs, plus demographic challenges posed by the baby boomers reaching retirement age, likely is in for political upheaval over the next decade. What’s needed is a new consensus that supports policies different from those of the postwar consensus — policies that can tackle all those issues successfully.
Piereson sees hope in the ability to remake its political order that America has demonstrated in the past. As he writes, “No particular consensus or set of political arrangements can be regarded as permanent in a dynamic country like the United States.”
He doesn’t claim to know exactly when or how the new consensus America needs will come about. Rather, he says, the nation’s problems either “will be addressed through a ‘fourth revolution’ or the polity will begin to disintegrate. … The end of the postwar regime need not bring about the end of America. On the contrary, it could open a dynamic new chapter in the American story.”
At Ricochet, Piereson discusses his new work in a 13 minute audio interview with John J. Miller on his Bookmonger podcast.