Our Partisan Future?

I admit to being more optimistic about America’s future than most commentators, left or right. Progressives have spent the better part of a decade warning that fascism is an imminent threat. Too many conservatives, for their part, have settled into an apparently interminable era of gloom and Ronald Reagan’s cheerful optimism feels like a distant memory. We hear instead that traditional conservatism needs to be replaced with some form of “post-liberalism.” Concerned pundits speak of—and some radicals hope for—a looming era of civil unrest and perhaps even civil war, suggesting our national divisions are beyond reconciliation.