Bookshelf: Expanding the Pie: A New Public Philosophy
Political discourse in modern America usually proceeds on one of two levels -- either slogans ("It's Morning in America"), or specific policies (individual retraining accounts). The vast area between, where slogans are connected to policies and policies are linked to one another, is often the most important but the least discussed. Here is forged a public philosophy.</br></br>Since the end of the Great Society, conservative Republicans have busily been seeding this value-laden terrain. Through countless articles, books, academic studies and conferences, they have concocted a relatively coherent public philosophy. Liberal Democrats, by contrast, have had an abundance of slogans and detailed programs, but they have tended in recent years to ignore the normative vision lying between. As a result, their public philosophy has seemed muddled. This has cost them dearly.</br></br>Robert Lekachman, a professor of economics at City University of New York, understands the importance of a coherent public philosophy and worries that liberals have lost their way. In his "Visions and Nightmares: America After Reagan" (Macmillan, 316 pages, $19.95), he sets out the central challenge for America's left -- to articulate principles of equity and social justice, "and appeal to passions of morality and patriotism that avoid the chauvinism and intrusions into lifestyles of the political right."</br></br>Mr. Lekachman has two recurring nightmares about American society after Ronald Reagan. The first is that America will slip into a deeper and more prolonged neoconservativism. It will feature the privatization of public services and its corollary, the substitution of vouchers for publicly funded services; the destruction of labor unions and thus a continued downward drift in real wages; in consequence of both, an increasing gulf between the rich and the poor; an enlarged and engorged military; and so on.</br></br>Mr. Lekachman's other nightmare is that "neoliberals" will be in charge. He defines them (along with your reviewer) as people who, in contrast to conventional liberals, believe in market solutions and assume social harmony. "For them, politics seems less group conflict than the search for tax, regulatory, and mild planning initiatives that promote enough growth to soften the harsh edges of ancient struggles between rich and poor, black and white, males and females, the sunbelt and the rust belt." Neoliberals are individualists, technocrats and yuppies. They come perilously close to being neoconservatives. You wouldn't want them living next door, least of all in power.