Since the seventeenth century, there have been two narratives about modernity in general and America in particular. I use the term “narrative” to include (a) facts, (b) arguments, and most important, (c) a larger vision of how one sees the world and chooses to engage the world. Public policy debates revolve around how one chooses to identify potential problems and solutions. To be sure, narratives appeal to facts and arguments but they also inevitably reflect fundamental commitments and choices about how one engages the world. That is why public policy debates cannot be resolved simply by appeal to objective facts.
What then are the two narratives? The first and originalist narrative is the Lockean Liberty narrative. Lockeans endorse the technological project (TP), transformation of nature for human betterment. They understand that the project is best carried out in a free
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