Patrick Deneen on Incoherence

Just go over to the Front Porch Republic and read it.  Here is a teaser:

Nearly every effort one now witnesses by that same modern State is aimed at employing its massive power toward the end of mitigating the mounting (and probably uncontrollable) consequences of that very project of mastery. We live in the wake of efforts to control the natural world – in significant part by harnessing concentrated ancient sunlight – and see the fruits of our labor not only in the poisoned gulf, but a poisoned world. We live in the aftermath of efforts to eliminate risk from our financial world – and see the fruits of that effort in an economic crisis that remains at the edge of conflagration. We live in the shadow of efforts to eliminate all forms of human suffering and want, and face a future of unpayable debts for payments given to the richest generation on earth. We live in a time of self-satisfaction of our brilliance and inventiveness, but pen articles questioning why it is that – for all our technology – we seem to be daily more stupid.