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The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > The New Pamphleteerswe are living in an era when many of our key institutions are failing. Before Watergate and the collapse of Vietnam, there existed an American Establishment, a bipartisan group of bankers, politicians and journalists who shaped the contours of national opinion...Pamphleteering is what happens when no one -- editorial writers, university professors, publishing executives -- is doing much ''filtering.'' Without strong political parties and powerful labor unions, Arianna Huffington's and Sean Hannity's politics is the kind of politics you get…
If the only choice we have is between no politics and vituperative politics, the latter is -- just barely -- preferable. Of course this could change if we recreated an Establishment that decided which television programs we would watch and how much dissent we would permit -- a prospect as unlikely (because the Establishment is gone) as it would be unwelcome (because it would constitute censorship). In the meantime, we argue about politics and even argue about how we argue about politics, just what you might expect when no one is in charge but ourselves.
Alan Wolfe is the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. He is working on a book about the idea of American greatness.