NYPost | Here’s the good news: The chaos and upheaval we see all around us
have historical precedents and yet America survived. The bad news:
Everything likely will get worse before it gets better again.
That’s my chief takeaway from “Shattered Consensus,”
a meticulously argued analysis of the growing disorder. Author James
Piereson persuasively makes the case there is an inevitable “revolution”
coming because our politics, culture, education, economics and even
philanthropy are so polarized that the country can no longer resolve its
differences.
To my knowledge, no current book makes more sense about the great
unraveling we see in each day’s headlines. Piereson captures and
explains the alienation arising from the sense that something important
in American life is ending, but that nothing better has emerged to
replace it.
The impact is not restricted by our borders. Growing global conflict
is related to America’s failure to agree on how we should govern
ourselves and relate to the world.
Piereson describes the endgame this way: “The problems will mount to a
point of crisis where either they will be addressed through a ‘fourth
revolution’ or the polity will begin to disintegrate for lack of
fundamental agreement.”
