유발 레빈의 새 책

 

유발 레빈은 촉망받는 우파 이론가이다. 아래는 아마존에 있는 그의 책 소개이다.

 

미국 좌파들은 강력한 노조, 거대 공공 프로그램, 인종차별과 남녀평등에서의 진보 등이 있었던 20세기 중반을 그리워하고, 보수우파들은 자유화와 감세가 주조를 이루었던 레이건 시대를 재현하려 한다. 하지만 미국은 이미 개인주의와 다이내미즘, 자유화 등으로 연대와 결집, 사회적 질서가 훼손된 상태이다.

 

따라서 남은 과제는 급진적인 개인주의와 중앙집권적인 국가주권주의를 회피하고, 사회의 허리라 할 수 있는 가족, 공동체, 학교, 교회, 자선기관, 협회, 지방정부, 시장 등을 복구하는 정치의 현대화에 맞춰져야 한다.

 

The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism

by Yuval Levin

 

Americans today are frustrated and anxious. Our economy is sluggish, and leaves workers insecure. Income inequality, cultural divisions, and political polarization increasingly pull us apart. Our governing institutions often seem paralyzed. And our politics has failed to rise to these challenges.

 

No wonder, then, that Americans--and the politicians who represent them--are overwhelmingly nostalgic for a better time. The Left looks back to the middle of the twentieth century, when unions were strong, large public programs promised to solve pressing social problems, and the movements for racial integration and sexual equality were advancing. The Right looks back to the Reagan Era, when deregulation and lower taxes spurred the economy, cultural traditionalism seemed resurgent, and America was confident and optimistic. Each side thinks returning to its golden age could solve America’s problems.

 

In The Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin argues that this politics of nostalgia is failing twenty-first-century Americans. Both parties are blind to how America has changed over the past half century--as the large, consolidated institutions that once dominated our economy, politics, and culture have fragmented and become smaller, more diverse, and personalized. Individualism, dynamism, and liberalization have come at the cost of dwindling solidarity, cohesion, and social order. This has left us with more choices in every realm of life but less security, stability, and national unity.

 

Both our strengths and our weaknesses are therefore consequences of these changes. And the dysfunctions of our fragmented national life will need to be answered by the strengths of our decentralized, diverse, dynamic nation.

Levin argues that this calls for a modernizing politics that avoids both radical individualism and a centralizing statism and instead revives the middle layers of society—families and communities, schools and churches, charities and associations, local governments and markets. Through them, we can achieve not a single solution to the problems of our age, but multiple and tailored answers fitted to the daunting range of challenges we face and suited to enable an American revival.