Richard Reinsch has done us a service in his review and podcast interview on Christopher Caldwell’s astonishing new book The Age of Entitlement. He shows that conservatives, indeed all Americans, need to wrestle with what Caldwell says about the transformation of post-War America, leading to what we see today: political conflicts that we seem unable to resolve and unwilling to give up.
Caldwell offers an historical analysis of both political and non-political events to further his thesis about America as a whole. He shows us America in 1945, like a Greek god trying to remake the world in accordance with its wishes. Then he shows us America in the ‘60s, shaken by conflicts that defied understanding, much less resolution—driven mad and having become self-destructive as punishment for its arrogance. Finally, he shows us America since 1981, united primarily in ignoring its core conflicts.
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