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James Piereson

Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America s Postwar Political Order Hardcover – Illustrated, July 14, 2015

by James Piereson (Author)

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The United States has been shaped by three sweeping political revolutions: Jefferson’s “revolution of 1800,” the Civil War, and the New Deal. Each of these upheavals concluded with lasting institutional and cultural adjustments that set the stage for a new phase of political and economic development. Are we on the verge of another upheaval, a “fourth revolution” that will reshape U.S. politics for decades to come? There are signs to suggest that we are.

James Piereson describes the inevitable political turmoil that will overtake the United States in the next decade as a consequence of economic stagnation, the unsustainable growth of government, and the exhaustion of postwar arrangements that formerly underpinned American prosperity and power. The challenges of public debt, the retirement of the “baby boom” generation, and slow economic growth have reached a point where they require profound changes in the role of government in American life. At the same time, the widening gulf between the two political parties and the entrenched power of interest groups will make it difficult to negotiate the changes needed to renew the system.

Shattered Consensus places this impending upheaval in historical context, reminding readers that Americans have faced and overcome similar trials in the past, in relatively brief but intense periods of political conflict. While others claim that the United States is in decline, Piereson argues that Americans will rise to the challenge of forming a new governing coalition that can guide the nation on a path of dynamism and prosperity.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Encounter Books
Publication date

July 14, 2015
Dimensions

5.9 x 1.6 x 9.1 inches
ISBN-10

1594036713
ISBN-13

978-1594036712
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“This collection of James Piereson’s lapidary essays secures his place among America’s leading conservative intellectuals and cultural critics.”
—George F. Will

“James Piereson’s insights into various aspects of America’s current political order are always well-grounded and well-argued, often unconventional, and sometimes alarming. This is one of the most thought-provoking volumes I’ve read in a long time.”
—William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard

“The timeliest of books, Shattered Consensus is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the 2016 election campaign. The book is also crucial reading for those who seek to gain a better understanding of our financial crises, both past and future.”
—Amity Shlaes, author of Coolidge and The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression

“James Piereson reminds us that so much of what we have been told by modern-day economists is flat-out wrong. America needs to relearn how economies really work, and reading this book is a good start.”
—Stephen Moore, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation

About the Author

James Piereson is president of the William E. Simon Foundation and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he directs the Center for the American University. He has served as executive director and trustee of the John M. Olin Foundation, and has taught political science at several prominent universities. He is a frequent contributor to various journals and newspapers, including "The New Criterion, Commentary, " and "The Weekly Standard." He is the author of "Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism." Mr. Piereson lives in New York City.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Encounter Books; Illustrated edition (July 14, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1594036713
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594036712
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.66 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.9 x 1.6 x 9.1 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #931,451 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,444 in Political Economy
- #1,869 in United States National Government
- #2,419 in Economic Conditions (Books)

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Brian K. Miller

Clearly lays out the path that brought us here, but offers no hope for the future

Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2015

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Shattered Consensus does a fine job of reviewing each step along the path creating the deeply divided American electorate of the current era. Before reading this book I often found myself watching the news or reading online commentaries and struggling to understand how we could devolve from the the united people that destroyed the Third Reich and rebuilt the modern world from the ashes of World War Two into this place where no one listens to anyone while everyone assumes they each individually hold the sole absolute truth of what kind of future we are building. If, like me, you are completely baffled by the way extremists have come to define both our political and social discourse, then this book will lay it out for you step by step.

Unfortunately, for all his skill at delineating how we got here, James Pierson has no suggestions for how we can reach across the divided aisles of our homes and townhalls to restore faith in one another and reopen the honest dialogue we will need to manage the chaos we face on the global stage. Four stars for showing how we got here, but only four. This book is only half the story. What we really need is a guidebook to getting ourselves out of this chaos and back to a respectful understanding of our differences.

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Danioton

Student Loan Funds Feed Leftist Psychoses

Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2020

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Shattered Consensus is well worth the money and an insightful read on a number of topics tracking the origins and evolution of thinking on the left and right. In the latter half of the book the author tracks over the last several decades the bizarre cancer like transformation of our higher education from a healthy system striving to inculcate an open liberal attitude in graduates to one focused on closing down analytical thought and imposing far left ideological ‘woke’ talking points. However, the author pretty much leaves out any practical solutions to this problem.

How did this shift happen? They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The expansion of leftism tracks the growth and availability of easy money for student loans intended to help as many as possible attend college. But offer unlimited free money (it’s free to the schools who in the current system suffer few if any consequences for facilitating what often become ‘bad’ loans) and that leads to schools’ incentives shifting from striving for teaching excellence and scholarly reputation to pleasing (and retaining) customers (students). Even though the schools are front and center in this shift the role of easy loan money in facilitating this has gone unnoticed.

Student loan programs have had a structural flaw from inception - they focus concerns for repayment on two beneficiaries, the taxpayers and the students/borrowers, when there is an important third. Ignoring that third beneficiary, the schools themselves, is the root cause of rampant creation of too many loans, so many graduate burdened with obligations that many can never repay, and for the taxpayer being left to pay for ever more defaulted loans. There’s simply no incentive for schools not to make a loan. By the time the issue of nonpayment arises their former student (the customer) is long gone. And it’s this lack of consequences that led to the loss of standards as schools competed to drop standards to please their customers and also allowed the proliferation of the many new woke departments teaching useless classes, topics and majors.

The remedy is simple. While we probably politically speaking cannot shut down the system of student loans we can achieve a better balance by adjusting incentives so that the system heals itself and by heal I mean we stop feeding the cancer and begin forcing it to shrink. Schools in order to participate in the loan program should become liable for some percentage of any eventual future defaults for loans their students borrow. This could be 5%, or 25%, or more. The consequence will be that schools will turn their attention from short term considerations such as making students happy to considerations of quality, or in other words whether the student and the student’s program of study are likely to ensure repayment of their loans, or, in other words whether the loan represents a worthy risk of their (the school’s) resources. Too many bad loans will eventually mean bankruptcy for most schools.

If the system is re-structured so that there is a cost to graduating a woke indoctrinated product that can’t think and won’t ever earn compensation (as a valued employee or a value generating entrepreneur) sufficient to repay their loans (i.e. a bad investment for the student, taxpayers and, under this new system, also for the school) the newly aware school management will be incentivized to care very much that they invest in employable graduates. School management in order to survive will impose controls on what is taught and quotas on numbers of majors. Loans for Physics or Chemistry majors will be approved but pretty much any major in any leftist topic area will be deemed too risky i.e. costly. The solution won’t happen overnight but then the cancer took decades to metastasize, but with time the cancer will be starved and die out not only in the schools but in every nook and cranny of our society.

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