Source: Law & Liberty
by Graham McAleer
“The West’s politics orients around the Enlightenment state. Our modern ideal of governance is tolerant, bureaucratic, and egalitarian. We expect the benefits of rule of law, and on this condition, cede to government the monopoly of violence, as Max Weber famously put it. This is our security trade. Most Westerners alive have never experienced true chaos, so the trade has proved its worth. Nonetheless, calcifying economic inequities and persistent problems with immigration, education, and crime mean the Western ideal today is under enormous pressure from the left and right. Critics from the postmodern left and the premodern right fret that the West has lost its way.” (04/29/24)