This is a good essay along the same lines.
I've read the books he mentions.
http://blogs.the-american-interest....rt-one-the-crisis-of-the-american-dream/The frustration and bitterness that fills American politics these days reflects the failure of our current social, political and economic institutions and practices to deliver the results that Americans want and expect. It’s comparable to the frustration and fear that swept through the country in the late 19th and early 20th century as the first American dream – that every family could prosper on its own farm – gradually died.
We'll know we are making progress as a country when people across the spectrum can agree what the problem is. We still do not know what the problem is. Much of this echoes Kuhn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhnthat scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way; that these paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding that scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community. Competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable; that is, they are competing accounts of reality which cannot be coherently reconciled. Thus, our comprehension of science can never rely on full "objectivity"; we must account for subjective perspectives as well.
