Howard Richards

Part One

         Since it is a premise of my title that the United States needs to be transformed, I will have to explain what sort of transformation I have in mind and why I think one is needed.  “Transformation” is in any case a relative matter; there can be more or less of it and more and less need for it.   While I do not deny that the nation might continue to exist without transforming itself, I believe that none of its principal problems will be solved unless there is a sea-change, or culture-shift (to use two terms I take to be equivalent to “transformation.”)  To employ yet a third equivalent:  more than new policies we need new “paradigms.”  I call the paradigms we need “ethical” and sometimes “posteconomic.”  Neither rebates for taxpayers, stricter auto emission standards, government backing for new green industries, crackdowns on tax loopholes and havens, aid to save homeowners from foreclosure, withdrawal from Iraq, nor any number of other separate measures will turn the tide.  The “tide” (another term I will explain) can only be turned with guidance from  more comprehensive and open-minded thinking, from thinking at a higher stage of collective moral development (Habermas 1995) (to use fourth and fifth equivalents to  “transformed”). To say what I take to be the same thing in yet a sixth way:  The basic problems of the United States and the world are structural.   They can only be solved by transforming the basic structure to produce a more functional structure.