Kristol argued that this was the great seduction of modern politics — to believe that problems that were essentially moral and civic could be solved by economic means. They can’t. Political problems, even many economic problems, are, at heart, ethical and cultural problems. And improving the attitudes and virtues of a nation is, at best, a slow, halting process.
David Brooks in Three Cheers for Irving.
Very good point. I had slowly been coming to that conclusion myself but didn't have any concrete idea about how to express it. But it seems like we need to realize that it's a cultural problem if we're going to address it; otherwise, we'll keep applying the wrong fix, it will not work, and we'll produce never-ending scar tissue trying to fix it.
Posted by: mattbg at September 28, 2009 9:47 AM