Abstract

The real state of the union

This article presents information on two books, "The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America," by Robert Nisbet and "Barbarian Sentiments: How the American Century Ends," by William Pfaff. Sociologist Robert Nisbet and political analyst William Pfaff have written a pair of idiosyncratic meditations on the moral, intellectual and political disarray that characterize present-day United States. Nisbet thinks the Founders would be appalled, particularly by three phenomena that were noticeably absent from the U.S. of their intentions: the enormous military and the concomitant militarization of the economy and the universities, the bloated federal bureaucracy and the widespread proliferation of "loose individuals," the fast-buck artists who are paradigms of a deeper social dissolution. Pfaff glosses over the commendable fact that what the ascendancy lost, American minorities, to a large extent anyway, gained. Political power was disseminated on a scale that is rare in history.