Cliff Notes: Free, Smart, Real, Just America

If you have 45 minutes to ponder the state of this great nation over the upcoming Independence Day weekend, I recommend “How America Fractured into 4 Parts,” by George Packer, published by The Atlantic in Medium. If you don’t have kind of time, I offer these Cliff Notes to a useful perspective on our country’s status.

The melting pot that is the United States of America has devolved into that picky eater who separates his food into discrete piles, and freaks out when runny egg seeps under his bacon or a single grain of rice infiltrates his beans. Each of us falls, with scary precision, into one of four camps. Each camp crafts a narrative that stakes legitimate claim as rightful owner of the 21st century American dream. Yet each dismisses all others as immoral or unpatriotic, ignorant or communist. In truth, each faction is a little bit right, a little bit wrong, and all whole lot obstructive.

Free Americans are the ideological descendants of libertarian backlash to the New Deal that gathered steam under Barry Goldwater, came to full flower under Ronald Reagan, and flourishes as today’s dominant politics insomuch as every policy discussion gets couched in terms set by Free Americans. The individual is supreme. His rights are paramount. The only good government is less government. And that extends to corporations, who fill campaign coffers in…