But some of this reflects a kind of ideological conspiracy at the heart of our politics. We are attached to a story of American decline that is centered around ideological disagreement. That makes it easy to miss pathologies rooted in ideological collusion. Over the course of the twentieth century, America developed a right that fought the government and a left that hobbled it. Debates over the size of government obscured the diminishing capacity of government. An abundance of consumer goods distracted us from a scarcity of homes and energy and infrastructure and scientific breakthroughs.
