I know we are not suffering from too little to read, but let me recommend the great Janet Daley, in today’s Telegraph. Her column is here. Daley, for those who don’t know her, is an American who has spent her adult life in Britain. She moved there in the 1960s. She had studied at Berkeley, where she was, naturally, on the left. She migrated rightward — but “right” doesn’t seem right to me. She is not ideological. She is simply . . . clear-minded.
Is that insulting, to those on the left? Afraid so, but . . .
Daley writes, “. . . the US has a very different historical experience from European countries, with their accretions of national remorse and class guilt: it has a far stronger and more resilient belief in the moral value of liberty and the dangers of state power. This is a political as much as an economic crisis . . .”
And she ends, “The hardest obstacle to overcome will be the idea that anyone who challenges the prevailing consensus of the past 50 years is irrational and irresponsible. That is what is being said about the Tea Partiers. In fact, what is irrational and irresponsible is the assumption that we can go on as we are.”
Yes.