So far, I have mostly spoken in favor of approaches to politics and policy, rather than details. This is in the interest of being somewhat ecumenical; I think these approaches can work for people across the political spectrum, and I want to avoid too many landmines in making that case. But for me, the final piece of the puzzle is more specific, and less philosophical than actuarial. In short: I think the trajectory of America’s entitlement programs, specifically Medicare, is simply unsustainable. Progressives wish to continue expanding those commitments, or adopt mostly-destructive top-down solutions (like the rationing of care) to reduce their costs. Most of what I believe in terms of making changes to existing and venerable programs comes down to my read of the math. (This is why I have insisted for years that it is appropriate for middle- and upper-class people pay more for predictable health care expenses.) I do not trust the top-down solutions to solve those problems optimally. For years, I have believed that Republicans were more likely to solve this issue than Democrats, and as such, I have voted for Republican after Republican.
Alas, the election of Trump changes all that. Trump does not recognize the problem. It is likely that he will be followed as president by a Democrat who also does not recognize this, or who places it below the desire for additional government spending. That would take us to 2024 or 2028 before we’d even have a slight chance of fixing this problem. Meanwhile, every year, the problem will get worse. So now we have two parties that refuse to grapple with this problem, and the party that used to rhetorically has abandoned its position.
It’s hard to say where things go from here, but I suspect the answer is in a very negative direction. American politics for the next few decades will likely be a constant fight over health care spending and benefits: what services are required, what services are non-essential, what experimental drugs are available, what drugs are not covered, what treatments get subsidized, etc. I expect health care delivery to become increasingly mechanical, with less and less personal care and attention from medical professionals, and more and more from standard operating procedures, written by technical experts and vetted and approved by bureaucrats. At the same time, I expect medical innovation to slow to a trickle, as government increasingly regulates prices, and research and development budgets get slashed.
This is a bleak vision, and we will never know the lives lost--or at least shortened--by the errors that will emerge in this process, and the lost or delayed medical advances.
It actually gets worse, though: what I have outlined above is essentially a society governed by the politics of scarcity, which are substantially scarier than the politics of abundance that characterized much of the 20th century. Scarcity is terrible, and we should expect people to vote out of desperation. The first salvo in that new world was election of Trump. We should not expect it to be the last.
This all means that it is critical that we do what we must to avoid the further fraying of the social ties that bind us. The approach I have outlined here is specifically tailored to avoid backlash. Give people more of an investment in their communities through decentralization. Avoid politicizing every sphere of life, so that people can form stronger, lasting connections. Create predictable laws so that the government treats people equally, and people don’t get frustrated by favoritism. Don’t push policy that destroys or weakens the hold of traditional institutions without extreme caution and care. Take the broad population’s concerns to heart by not reflexively dismissing populist movements. In a world we don’t understand, these are prudential steps to deal with uncertainty.
The alternative, in my estimation, is a society that continues to fracture as people are constantly disappointed, and a political order that swerves violently between the political poles, driven by aggressive executive action rather than prudential lawmaking. Our victories will be temporary, our struggles permanent. That is the future I wish to avoid.
I’ll close with Lincoln. Though I don’t anticipate violent civil war, we are drifting in a bad direction, and Lincoln’s conciliatory words closing his First Inaugural are always worth remembering:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
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OK, so you’ve made it this far and you don’t hate yourself for wasting your time. Who should you be reading instead? By and large, right-leaning media is horrendous (see: Breitbart, FOX, etc.), but the Right commentariat is really quite good: they engage thoughtfully with their progressive interlocutors in different ways and from different perspectives, and they often engage with one another over their various differences on policy and priority.
I’ll offer a few people:
Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s writings helped crystallize some sentiments I had about the social sciences; I started to read him right after I got out of college, at a time where I was open to his ideas. I’m glad I did! Taleb has persuasively written on the problems of living in a world we don’t understand, and saw the financial crisis coming years in advance. The Black Swan is the essential text. Antifragile is a tougher read, but worthwhile as well.
Next, the Catholics: Michael Brendan Dougherty, Ross Douthat, and Pascal Emmanuel-Gobry are sort of on the same spectrum, with Dougherty the most skeptical about foreign entanglements and Emmanuel-Gobry the most enthusiastic (though also measured). All are probably best described as “reform conservatives,” and all are deeply influenced by their Catholicism. Douthat is both a wonderful prose stylist and the most consistently thoughtful writer I read. Dougherty and Emmanuel-Gobry write at The Week; Douthat retains his perch as the New York Times’ token conservative columnist.
Next, the libertarians. Tyler Cowen should probably win a Nobel Prize in Economics for his prolific blogging, writing, and general status as a polymath. He is always interesting. His stuff is compiled at Marginal Revolution, where he blogs with Alex Tabarrok. Megan McArdle is an equally-prolific blogger over at Bloomberg, and her writing has greatly influenced how I make and evaluate an argument. She is a principled, pragmatic libertarian.
Reihan Salam is a brilliant writer and journalist. He has taken a special interest in how conservative ideas can interact with urban societies. He writes a column for Slate and is an editor at National Review.
The most intelligent, thoughtful “movement conservative” I read regularly is Ramesh Ponnuru. He also has a column at Bloomberg (a trend here), and works for National Review. You’ll also periodically hear him sparring with EJ Dionne on NPR if David Brooks isn’t available.
Jay Cost of The Weekly Standard has been a great political commentator for over a decade, and is a recently-minted PhD from the University of Chicago. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of history, which gives him the ability to put current events in perspective, and is also somewhat heterodox on key conservative policy issues. He left the GOP over Trump.
Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist is the best media critic on the Right writing today; she’s absolutely fearless and quite compelling. She relentlessly identifies double standards and weak logic.
For environment and technology questions, I tend to defer to Jim Manzi. Manzi doesn’t write often, but he’s always excellent. I’ve adapted some of the ideas in his excellent book, Uncontrolled, as part of the framing here.
But on the Right, Yuval Levin towers above all. He’s not on Twitter or social media, but he blogs (periodically) at National Review Online, and his contributions are always the most thoughtful on the site. He is also the editor of National Affairs, a policy journal released once per quarter.
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