What's wrong with America? Ask Jon Taplin.

Reagan and the neoconservatives managed to convince their followers that the only thing the government knew how to do well was fight wars. All the rest--building the Interstate Highway System, running Social Security and Medicare--the government must be incompetent. But it is the financing of the National Security State that prevents us from providing a world class universal health care and K-College education system. Nothing else. And until the Democrats are willing to provide a counter-narrative to Glenn Beck's vision of what's wrong with America--one aimed at the working class and not Wall Street--the social contagion of the interregnum's morbid symptoms will continue to spread.

This is the conclusion that Jon Taplin has come to. It's very interesting how he gets there.

I had identified the problem of the culture clash myself, but I had not put the rest of it all together they way he has. His book should be very interesting.