(5 of 8)
Did I mention that this is a presidential election year--an invitation to nutcases ordinarily? This time everyone seems to have accepted the invitation, evidently having taken seriously the truism that anybody can grow up to be President. In addition to normally qualified candidates, those who have presented themselves as potential leaders of the free world include an apologist for Adolf Hitler; a professional wrestler who changed his name from the Body to the Mind; and a real estate magnate at once so ridiculous and self-confident that he is oddly mesmerizing. Indeed, watching the entire crop of Reform Party candidates vie for position is like watching dogs copulate in a public square: it's not pleasant, but you can't take your eyes off them.
For all our Big Business expansions, government too remains big, and most people engage in the harmless hypocrisy of condemning its interferences and relying on its services. Fundamentally, we remain a liberal nation in spite of the gloatings or laments that liberalism is dead. If this year's Democratic platform resembles that of the Republicans, it will not be because the Democrats have capitulated but because the G.O.P. has absorbed the liberal agenda.
Nonetheless, as one of our few genuine statesmen, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has said, "Liberalism has to learn to deal with the aftermath of its successes." In recent years, liberals have cornered themselves into appearing to approve of everything opposed to God and family. The country has been polluted with an idea called political correctness, which is simply a fundamentalism of the left. We are beginning to reach a point of equilibrium between laissez-faire capitalism and the welfare state, and to learn to discriminate between useful sympathy for the needy and wasteful excuses for careless behavior. But we still have plenty of braying pietists. Has the name William Bennett floated up to you?
I wish I could accurately report on our status in the world. We've got the weapons and the dollars. What Henry Luce saw as the American Century in the middle of the 1900s is nothing compared with the Americanization of the globe these days. Whether this owes more to cheap hamburgers or to free thought is hard to know. We are as we were and probably will be forever--eager to control the world and eager to stay out of it.
There are almost 190 independent countries, of which some 30 remain monarchies, most of them constitutional. There are many more democracies than before, and one senses a yearning on the part of former enemies, even those of bitter long standing, to bury the hatchets and the Uzis and get on with it. Northern Ireland recently appeared to be healing itself. The Middle East seems to be coming to its senses; the other day, the leader of Syria made a peaceful move toward Israel, which made a peaceful move in return, and the world did not come to an end. For all we know, both these areas may be associated only with productive cooperation in your time. If you are still smoking cigars, I hope they're Cuban.