America First

This is my latest at the Partial Observer. Excerpt:

It's funny how supposed "liberals" and "conservatives" say positive things about what America stands for, and pander to voters by saying nice things about the American "people," yet they say very little that is positive about American civil society. This, the "real" America, is what they despise most, because they can't control it. To the liberal, it's too greedy; to the conservative, it's too immoral. To the moderate with puritan leanings, these two problems merge into one word: "consumerism." According to them, civil society just can't behave itself and needs government to "fix" it, so that it better reflects their ideals and ideology. When government intervenes in civil society with unintended consequences, the excuse was that government lacked sufficient money and power, and the solution is to increase both.