Maggie's Farm

George Will reviews Brink Lindsay's The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture. A quote:

Lindsey rightly says that �today�s typical red-state conservative is considerably bluer on race relations, the role of women and sexual morality than his predecessor of a generation ago.� And �the typical bluestate liberal is considerably redder than his predecessor when it comes to the importance of markets to economic growth, the virtues of the two-parent family and the morality of American geopolitical power.� In �the bell curve of ideological allegiance,� the large bulging center has settled, for now, on an �implicit libertarian synthesis, one which reaffirms the core disciplines that underlie and sustain the modern lifestyle while making much greater allowances for variations within that lifestyle.� If so, material abundance has been, on balance , good for us, and Lindsey�s measured cheerfulness is, like his scintillating book, reasonable.

The whole review is here.