Is Prosperity Bad for America?

Last week, Brink Lindsey, author of
The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture , appeared on The Daily Show. He argues that unprecedented prosperity in the late 20th Century freed people up to think beyond their immediate material needs and to examine cultural and ideological assumptions. This has fed the current “Culture War” where some righties are unhappy with some of the cultural changes and some lefties are unhappy with some of the economic changes.

Prosperity does weaken the family. We don’t live in extended families or rely on our relatives as much as we used to because we don’t have to. We don’t stay in unhappy marriages because we can afford to get divorced. We aren’t as dependent on authorities as we once were so we don’t have to follow them as faithfully or starve in the hedgerows.

Could it be that the GOP really is trying to give the religious right its desires by putting an end to widespread prosperity? If they can drain the economy with stupid wars and other corporate welfare programs, we who are not at the trough will be less and less prosperous and will eventually have to live with our parents and cousins and what have you. We’ll have to stick together in clans just to survive. That’s the Christianists’ dream. Keep people busy trying to fulfill their basic needs so that they can’t question authority.

Maybe Bushian incompetence is really part of a cunning plan to restore the world to a feudal paradise.