A few items that came across my computer desktop today have prompted me to think of the solutions Americans want and the likelihood of achieving them.
- John Hood’s column on Germany’s strategic miscalculations a century ago.
- A email conversation with a friend stemming from People for the Way’s Born Again American.
- George’s post and the Anne Applebaum column he linked
- John Goodman’s note on the differences between Democrats and Republicans on health care.
The lyrics to Born Again American include references to the Bible and the Bill of Rights, but puts more emphasis on equality than on freedom and more emphasis on government than on other institutions.
My friend said, “Issues these days are all about finding solutions. Solutions is where everyone should be focused.” But as Anne Applebaum wrote about our longstanding, very public issues, “No one is lying about these things, but no one is doing very much about them either.”
It comes down to surface similarities masking deeper divisions. Those divisions go to the core of questions about not just the solutions, but the problems we seek to solve. Too much spending or too little taxes? Too much money or too little regulation? Too much carbon dioxide or too little reliable data? Coke or Pepsi? Keynes or Hayek?
Maybe our problem isn’t too much partisanship or too much vitriol in debates, but that the debates are going straight about solutions to the wrong problems.
