Ah yes -- the good old values of keeping minorities and women in their place. Sorry but I will take today over yesterday any day

I don't think Judt is arguing in favor of good old values, and nothing in his long career suggests he believes that minorities and women should be kept anywhere but where they would want to be.

I'm going to buy the book and reflect on what real alternatives to capitalism exist....

I've only read Jim's extracts, but mostly I think Judt is just writing pretty and doesn't have a coherent thesis. A bit like Ann, I wonder what he is nostalgic for?

You can see in the rhetoric of the Democratic party that it has conceded that a market system is preferred to the alternatives. It does the greatest good for the greatest number. Granted there should be regulation to prevent excesses, and to care for those who lack the endowments to succeed in a market economy (although the later function absolves social organization, like the church, of an obligation to care for the poor).

On the other hand, the excesses of the large banks stem from the well founded belief that the government is large enough to bail them out if they do get in trouble.

The market system is not perfect. But it is hubris to believe that a government planned economy would be superior. In our time we've witnessed the failure of those experiments in the small and the large. And most of those experiments have devolved towards totalitarianism and kleptocracy. And been utter failures in terms of abuse of the environment, and the welfare of the weakest.

That said, there is room for improvement. It's clear we should raise taxes on fossil fuels substantially in order to discourage their use. But tell me where the political will for that exists? I grant that many Republicans will claim it is merely a tax increase and an attack on the market system. That's a phony argument -- excessive pollution is a market failure. But beyond that smoke the real fire is that a vast majority of Americans of all stripes think of cheap energy as a right, and will punish politicians who take it away.

For me the sixties were a time when we finally started doing something about racism, and institutional racism at the highest level. We confronted the white culture of entitlement and supremacy. Today's purported culture of selfishness pales in comparison to that culture of selfishness.

I suppose I work with a self-selected group, since I am employed in a university civic engagement office, but the college students I know are not at all “at a loss” for what to do to address the problems mentioned here. Indeed, they are hard at work studying social issues and already finding amazing ways to use their hands, hearts, and very fine minds to make the world a better place, and many of them say they plan to continue this as their life’s work.

My generation, by contrast, was idealistic in the sense that we found time to protest, but beyond demonstrating against that war I don’t recall ever doing anything that was positively aimed at social improvement when I was a college student. And of course the members of my generation are the ones who grew up to be yuppies surrounded by cherished material goods.

The challenge I see for churchy types such as myself is how to convey to this generation (which is on the whole more religious than mine was, but which also includes many for whom the words “spiritual not religious” resonate strongly) my belief that the Good News I offer speaks to the same yearnings for justice and righteousness that tug at their hearts.