Commentary Magazine: dueling outlooks, which one seems right?

The Case for Pessimism
Mark Steyn
excerpts:

• societies advance when their citizens are able to fulfill their potential in freedom
• in five years’ time, the preeminent economic power on the planet will be a one-party state with a Communist Politburo
• There were three great citadels of Western civilization: Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem. It took a fourth, London, Washington’s immediate predecessor as the dominant power, to disseminate the ideas of Athenian democracy and Roman law and the Hebrew Bible to the farthest corners of the earth. America has signs of decline that follow the examples of all four.
• The evil of big government is not that it is a waste of money, but that it lays waste to people.
• as all dominant nations learn, when money drains, power drains
•  In 1969, in a poem about the end of the British empire called “Homage to a Government,” Philip Larkin wrote: “Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home/For lack of money…/We want the money for ourselves at home/Instead of working.” The narrator keeps saying that “this is all right,” but he concludes with this: “The statues will be standing in the same/Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same./Our children will not know it’s a different country./All we can hope to leave them now is money.” 

The Case for Optimism
John Podhoretz

• The fault lies not in Democrats, nor in Republicans, not in unions or cosseted banks; the fault, dear Brutus, lies in ourselves.  It is a powerful argument. But it is wrong.
•  As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.  
• The point is that ordinary people didn’t just get up and dance because it was fashionable. They were presented with powerful motivations to do so
• And when we think about what it will mean to change course, we are all discouraged. It can’t be done.
  
  Of course it can.  The evidence that a change in trajectory is more than possible can be found in the American political system over the past few years.
•  the American system has functioned because its revolutionary acknowledgement of the primacy of the individual also confers on the individual a sense of responsibility for himself
• There are surprisingly few signs of social instability even as the financial crisis enters its fifth year
• The first temptation has been to direct the behavior of the citizenry through the manipulation of the tax code, which (over time) creates a system of perverse incentives.
• The second temptation is to secure long-term control over public office by creating a constituency among public-sector workers through contracts that have, over time, made those in the employ of the government or those receiving retirement benefits from the government twice as wealthy as the people who are employing them.
• And for the first time, in 2011, politicians have begun to address the crisis seriously.
• we can be confident in this: the American people have made rational choices in the past, and there is no reason to believe they will cease making rational choices in the future

Comment:  I would add that a society that is free will tend to be more creative and flexible in terms of meeting its challenges.  If our society remains free, we will be alright.  If we abandon freedom, we will be in big trouble.