What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?

[nebris]

From The New York Review of Books
Volume 56, Number 20 · December 17, 2009
By Tony Judt

The following is adapted from a lecture given at New York University on October 19, 2009.Americans would like things to be better. According to public opinion surveys in recent years, everyone would like their child to have improved life chances at birth. They

Comments

[underlankers]

I believe that the institutions and values of liberal democracy, whether in its congressional or parliamentary forms, is facing a crisis more serious than any in the Western World since the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the 200s BC. From that out of nowhere came the new Christian civilization. What manner of new horrors could use this kind of crisis to strengthen themselves is an open question, even the traditional enemies of the current society are not going to be able to adapt well to this particular challenge.

To look to Dominionism, Fascism, or Communism is a serious mistake, nobody saw the Christians and the Pogroms and Book-Burnings of Late Antiquity coming until Count Theodosius was Augustus and it was upon them. I've believed for a long time that we do not need to look to the Weimar Republic and its collapse as a model, that was too orderly and disciplined. This would be more akin to the Military Anarchy.