Properly Understood

The worsening crises across all dimensions of American society-extreme political division, social and economic inequality, the politicization of the educational system, the looming retirement debacle, and much else-make clear that, at some point, the country took a wrong turn and that we find ourselves in a wholly new social and political situation. Most proposals for how to fix things involve policy changes coming from one or the other of the two major political parties. They offer no more than reforms to the existing system and have proven themselves incapable of bringing about needed change. But America's foundations are still intact, and we can rebuild on them. In this highly readable and wide-ranging book, the fruit of over thirty years of thought and research, Dwight Yoder makes the case that no amount of partisan-led policy reforms will get us to where we need to be as a country when we are fundamentally on the wrong path. We, as citizens, surrendered our power as citizen-rulers in exchange for the promise that technocrats would create a society that offered personal fulfillment and economic well-being. That has proven to be a bad bargain. The only solution is to return to the original vision of the Founders in which citizens themselves must bear the awesome and ennobling responsibility that freedom carries with it and reestablish our society on the basis of "self-interest, properly understood," in the words of Alexis de Tocqueville.