There’s no question about it: the corporate conservatives and their allies in the political and religious right are achieving a vast transformation of American life that only they understand because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries, in creating the greatest economic inequality in the advanced world. They have saddled our nation, our states, and our cities and counties with structural deficits that will last until our children’s children are ready for retirement and they are systematically stripping government of all its functions except rewarding the rich and waging war.