In the wake of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Americans cried out for catharsis. The 9/11 Commission delivered. What we are left with is an ill-conceived bureacracy in the guise of reform.
The inevitability of republicanism as the answer to infinite governmental woes seemed clear. Yet the belief that the world abhors an ideological vacuum was mistaken.
Western society tends to see disaster all around, from climate change to terrorism. But we live in a time of unbridled prosperity. Our age has nowhere near as great a measure of crisis as the age of total war.
