From Ross Douthat, writing an introduction to a new edition of Robert Nisbet’s The Quest for Community.
Man is a social being, and his desire for community will not be denied. … And if he can’t find that community on a human scale, then he’ll look for it on an inhuman scale–in the total community of the totalizing state.
Read the whole thing. It made me want to read the book.
Feb 4 2012
Edmund S. Phelps and Saifedean Ammous write, This shift of power from owners and innovators to state officials is the antithesis of capitalism. Yet this system's apologists and beneficiaries have the temerity to blame all these failures on "reckless capitalism" and "lack of regulation," which they argue necessitates m...
Feb 4 2012
Scott Sumner writes, In my view, Japan is the future of the global economy. Not the deflation (I think the Fed will be able to keep inflation close to 2%) but the low real interest rates. In retrospect the 2001 recession (when rates fell to 1%) was the canary in the coal mine. Nominal rates will probably be unusua...
Feb 4 2012
From Ross Douthat, writing an introduction to a new edition of Robert Nisbet's The Quest for Community. Man is a social being, and his desire for community will not be denied. ... And if he can't find that community on a human scale, then he'll look for it on an inhuman scale--in the total community of the totalizing ...
READER COMMENTS
Raymond T. Walter
Feb 4 2012 at 10:31am
That last sentence was the best one in that introduction.
HeironymousAnonymous
Feb 4 2012 at 10:44am
It is an exceptional book. You would enjoy it.
Mark V Anderson
Feb 4 2012 at 12:33pm
Even more than the need to belong, I found the essay important in its advocacy of pluralism. The implication of the article is that free states cannot exist without several bases of power emanating from voluntary associations.
I think that is true, and the reason that the USA has been the freest state in the World, if measured over the last 250 years. The US Constitution, democracy, and free enterprise, perhaps all necessary for the free state that arose after the Revolution, would not have been sufficient if not for the widely varying power bases that have existed since the country was founded. This is important for states trying to become free, and for older free states that are in danger of losing their liberty.
david
Feb 4 2012 at 4:51pm
Reminded of the individual-family-state axes noted by this paper (PDF):
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