I have in my hands the current issue of The American Interest. (Vol VII, No 2, November and December 2011). It is a well respected journal, and for good reason, on policy, politics, and culture, from a centrist, and scholarly perspective. And the table of contents reads as if this issue's choice of articles was decided at a working group in Zucotti Park.
The masthead for the American Interest includes Francis Fukuyama, Walter Russel Mead, Eliot Cohen, and also Bernard-Henri Levy, James Q. Wilson, Tyler Cowen, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Mario Vargas Llosa. These are not people who subscribe to any of the ideologies I saw discussed at OccupyBoston. They run the gamut from neo-liberal to neo-conservative, to whatever extent those labels mean anything nowadays.
And yet, take a look at the table of contents. I'm pasting it here since in 2 months the link will not make sense:
The Foreign Policy of Plutocracies
James Kurth
A financial plutocracy contributed to Britain's demise as a global power. Is the same fate in store for America?
Oligarchy and Democracy
Jeffrey A. Winters
Democratic institutions aren't sufficient in themselves to keep the wealthy few from concentrating political power.
Charles Darwin, Economist
Robert Frank
The Origin of Species is a better guide to our economy than The Wealth of Nations.
Frontier Economics
Brink Lindsey
Economic growth is increasingly taking place at the technological frontier. We need policies that keep pushing that frontier forward.
Toolbox: Constructive Dialogue
Thomas A. Stanton
Why have some financial firms weathered the crisis better than others? The answers contain lessons for how to regulate the industry.
POLICY SHOP
How to Shrink the IRS and Grow the Economy
Michael J. Graetz
A plan to ditch the income tax, make taxation fairer and aid economic growth all at the same time.
The Global Costs of American Ethanol
Rosamond L. Naylor & Walter P. Falcon
How U.S. ethanol policy creates global food insecurity.
Fannie, Freddie and the House of Cards
Mary Martell
The Obama Administration needs to be bolder in reforming the two government-sponsored mortgage giants.
REVIEWS
Tea Time
Jeremy D. Mayer
Millionaire Wall Streeters, media mavens and corporate titans make for unlikely populists.
The Way We Were?
Fred Baumann
What So Proudly We Hail is more than just a memorial to a bygone American era; it's a handbook for recovering endangered civic virtues.
The Justice Trickle
Jeremy Rabkin
Are human rights prosecutions inexorably on the rise? It all depends on how you count them.
Good People, Bad Laws
Kenneth M. Davidson
If you expect the worst from people, they'll often oblige.
Retroview: The Money Man
George S. Tavlas
Alexander Del Mar's view on the origins of money were revolutionary for the 19th century. Why have so few people heard of him?
NOTES & LETTERS
The Post-Imperial Blues: A Letter from Vienna
Franz Cede
Austria-Hungary and the Soviet Union both lost empries. What can we learn from how they coped?
American Political Dysfunction
Francis Fukuyama
America's system of checks and balances usually works well, but not when it comes to fixing the Federal budget.
I am reading through my paper copy, and will finish it tonight since I have an Amtrak train to ride to New York. I'll close this diary entry with a quote lifted from the article Tea Time:
. Never has an American populist movement been launched by so many who fart through silk.
This issue exudes influence from OWS.