There is nothing more frustrating than to expect the impossible as a matter of right, and yet such expectations are by now second nature to a large part of humanity. To see something on television is to feel entitled to it; to be promised something by a politician is to feel immediately deprived of it. What is called "the revolution of rising expectations" has reached such grotesque dimensions that men take it as an insult when they are asked to be reasonable in their desires and demands. The reasonable is what they expect to obtain automatically. The unreasonable is what they look to government to provide by special, ingenious effort. And, through its own credulity, or its cynicism, or both, modern government does feel compelled to promise not only the effort but the success of this effort.
But when people are determinedly unreasonable, all promises eventually fail and coercion of one kind or another is inevitable. In nation after nation such coercion is being desperately relied upon. Because the United States is so rich and productive, our society has so far been able, far better than any other, to placate the "revolution of rising expectations." Nevertheless, there is a mounting irritability, impatience, distemper, and mistrust. Each individual and every organized group, seeing no justification for self-discipline - indeed, holding the very idea of self-discipline in a kind of contempt - calls for ever greater discipline to be exercised against the rest. Self-government, the basic principle of this republic, is inexorably being eroded in favor of self-seeking, self-indulgence, and just plain aggressive selfishness.
This is an excerpt from On the Democratic Idea in America by Irving Kristol, published by Harper & Row in 1972. Kristol has been a prominent American social commentator since the late 1940's. He has been the editor of many publications including The Public Interest and Commentary Magazine. Kristol was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002.