Sublime

The neoliberal reforms we have witnessed over the past decades are no doubt pernicious. The downfall of the welfare state, however, is due not only to neoliberal ideology but also to the general reliance on the generation of capital wealth, which makes the welfare state hostage to economic crises.

The public craves meaning and identity. From its perspective, late modern society, including government, exists to frustrate this desire.

Weaver warns about “the insolence of material success,” the “technification of the world,” the obliteration of distinctions that make living “strenuously, or romantically” possible. “Presentism,” the effort to begin each day, as Allen Tate put it, as if there were no yesterday, has robbed man of his history and therefore his identity as a moral age

From the standpoint of Ely and the new generation economists, economic analysis and its application made up an inherently ethical task whose basic unit of analysis was the social whole. In this sense, their pronouncements were not socialist in a Marxist sense—that is, implying public ownership of capital and the ultimate displacement of capitalism—

Thinkers of the Enlightenment believed that the Liberal Games combination of freedom, safety, and equal opportunity would go beyond satisfying core philosophical tenets and generate a brilliant side effect: fantastic productivity. The Liberal Games are driven by human nature, just like the Power Games are. But in the Liberal Games, a key limitation

from the bad—for a morality of indifference. It’s a culture that educates for advancement—résumé building and the ladder of success—over attachment: to crafts, causes, and communities of competence.