I am quite sorry to say I agree with most of the article. The problem is not a lack of progress, but a very perceptible slowdown. If you prefer to take it that

I am quite sorry to say I agree with most of the article. The problem is not a lack of progress, but a very perceptible slowdown. If you prefer to take it that way, we are no longer accelerating. Trace our economic progress on a plot, and the derivative will not be positive. The problem is not so much in social programs or the leftist liberals, it's the burden they now represent and that we may not be able to afford for long if we do not start accelerating again. Watch the parallel with the decline of the Roman empire: "The historian Lactantius, who lived from 240 to 320, tells us that the problem was a bloated welfare state: The number of [welfare] recipients began to exceed the number of contributors [taxpayers] by so much that, with farmers' resources exhausted by the enormous size of the requisitions, fields became deserted" (http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/14/venezuela-inflation-price-controls-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/14/venezuela-inflation-price-c...) It would be great to be accelerating again, if only to be able to pay for a welfare state since it does not seem possible to agree on dismantling it when we can't keep affording it. I may be ideologically biased, but I would much prefer an acceleration of progress (and to pay for a welfare state) than matching my ideological beliefs in the current slowdown and cutting the welfare state. Maybe it is cyclical - there have beens periods of slowdown before. In Atlas Shrugged, behind the libertarianism, you can see the same very dim view of the future when fascism and communism seemed like the only ways forward for the masses, a moment which must have frightened a lot of people (I sure would have been frightened!) Maybe our problem is the lack of hope in the future, which is reducing our will to live? I like the author conclusion a lot, because it catches the moment in our time when this happened - the hippies. He may be wrong in framing it on their political views - the ignition of culturals wars may have been a strong factor, but at least it contained a hope for a better future.