It has to at least figure into it if we are going to accept the right's claim that our govt and society is Christian based and as such, should play a larger role and not be subject to any separation of church and state doctrines.
That may be true, but these policies could be adjusted and results improved if our govt was earnest about it.
It's interesting you bring up policies being adjusted. I finished listening to this Glen Loury and John McWhorter podcast interview with Marc Dunkleman about his new book
Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress—and How to Bring It Back. Marc is a professor at Brown and a man of the left but he speaks about "why nothing works". Not to bore you with all details but here's the intro Loury wrote:
Since the publication of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book
Abundance earlier this year, liberals and moderate Democrats seem to be taking up the idea that bureaucracy and over-regulation really can hinder the public good. My guest this week, Marc Dunkelman of Brown University’s Watson School for International and Public Affairs, adds that a muddled understanding and use of power contributes to a situation in which critical infrastructure projects too often take forever to complete, stall out, or never make it past the initial planning stages. His new book
Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress—and How to Bring It Back describes a situation in which narrow special interests and progressive activists undermine government-led actions that prioritize the needs of the general public over those of the most vocal critics.
The question,
“Why can’t we seem to get anything done in this country?” is a complex one. One answer, according to Marc, is that we rarely have
public servants who are empowered to give the green light. There are reasons for this, like
the infamous case of Robert Moses, whose unchecked power needlessly
destroyed communities across New York. So, how do we grant
local governments enough power to overcome special interests who want nothing built
without giving them so much power that they can take unilateral control of the decision-making process? Marc thinks that requires requires
a cultural shift among progressives, who need to get more comfortable with the idea of
responsible officials actually using the power granted them. He recommends empowering government to do what individuals can’t. Personally, I’m not so sure that creating such
executive authority, which can still be
vetoed by protest or internal maneuvering, would be as effective as Marc thinks. Then again, something,
anything working is preferable to nothing.
- Me again, it hits on the point you bring up. Even when policies are well-intentioned, making changes is very hard because entrenched interests, on the left and the right, want to keep the status quo. That’s not always about ideology, it’s about power, and it makes reform tough.
