Stefanie wrote:

There has been a huge social price...

Such as?

The US has the most unequal society on Earth when looked at from a certain point of view. Yes it is very much the land of opportunity. You can become very rich in America but it has huge income inequalities. Being born into a particular socio economic group is the largest determinate of your future income. America has a class system. Something Americans hate to hear but who honestly thinks George W Bush is a self made man. I am not suggesting there are easy solutions. I don't suggest an inheritance tax to give babies a reason to cry.
The social inequalities created by financial inequalities leads to better education, better health care etc for some; and some lead desperate lives. Crime is certainly not entirely determined by social deprivation but it is a factor. There is a conservative belief that economic inequality is the engine of capitalism. That is quite possibly true but is not I would argue moral. Yet as I said I do not have a simple solution but I do believe in a more European tradition of ameliorating the excesses of the market and in certain areas attempting to level the playing field. Education is one field. Ensuring a quality education for the greatest number is a traditional goal of liberalism. Of course we argue and make mistakes about the best method of achieving that but it is a central idea. Health care is another plank. That health care should be determined by ability to pay is not a widely held view in Europe and it seems elements in the US main stream appear to be edging in that direction.
I would argue that it is about looking beyond purely economic concerns to social and moral ones. There are questions of fairness and justice (which are clearly open to debate yet worth considering) and the idea of looking beyond individualism and asking what is good for society and the community. I would argue that US levels of economic inequality are a social evil and by regulating the market some of that can be alleviated however too much regulation kills the goose that lays the golden egg. We need a vibrant economy to pay for defense, education and health care for the good of society. It is in the interests of individuals sometimes to forgo certain liberties for the greater good, for society, hence we accept the boundary of law and lend power to government to make laws and govern. It is the duty of government to protect and serve. There has been a discourse between the supposed rights of the individual and the supposed rights of society at the heart of the political debate since the 17th century. Ultimately I believe in the process. Unrestrained individualism is anarchy and certain individuals claiming to rule only in the interests of society is authoritarian (fascism or communism). The only proper arbiter of the social good is the expressed wishes of the people at the ballot box.
There are claims that defending individual liberty is the fundamental basis of liberty for all. In many ways I find that a hard concept to refute or even challenge but then my idea of liberty extends beyond the purely economic. An essential part of liberty is being able to compete in a meritocracy with a level playing-field. I would argue that the economic inequalities distort that playing-field (it's where I'm very English -- it's just not cricket). I think it's almost certainly impossible to level the playing-field for a whole society: where each member of each generation has an equal chance, but you can improve the circumstances for your children -- there are iterative processes.
I do find it fundamentally difficult but then that's why I believe in democracy. No individual has a monopoly on truth we just see glimpses of it if we're lucky and try and muddle forward; and collectively I believe we are making progress. A greater number of people are alive than ever before. By the crudest measure of success the sheer quantity of consciousness on our planet is unprecedented.

I notice rereading it that I both defend individual liberty and argue the necessity of sometimes forgoing individual liberty and I stand by the contradiction. To be a Star Trek nerd for a second I believe the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one but it is also true that the liberty of the many arises out of the liberty of the one or the few.

RE: The Conservative Revival - New York Times