Certainly whatever follows free-market capitalism will be described in economic terms, because it will be legitimately within an economic sphere. What I am most concerned with is how we define that sphere - how large we, as a society allow it to be and what other spheres we construct/resurrect to act as countervailing forces on the economic sphere.

That is my main critique of libertarianism - that it is one dimensional - it simply declares that everything is within a (solely) economic sphere and leaves it at that.

So, yes, it is the struggle against libertarianism, against Capitalistic thinking. I never meant to imply the absence of economics.

That sounds like a struggle to move beyond capitalistic thinking, or, more specifically, libertarian thinking. If we imagine a system to replace or moderate the free market, we’re imagining a different economic system, not the absence of economics.

Economics, as a social and empirical science, is inescapable. It describes how we relate to one another. The behavior of rats can be described in economic terms. Whatever comes after the free market will be describable in economic terms. (And I’m not talking freakonomics here, man, just good old micro- and macro-economics.)

About the US you are correct; we are moving towards libertarianism at a stunning pace. We are by far the most conservative democracy on the planet, and it’s only getting worse. Here in Oregon, we are in a race to the bottom in education funding, and our once enviable state health care program for the working poor has been reduced to cover only the destitute. Oregonians are among the least taxed in the nation, yet there is virtually no hope of replacing revenues lost in the Oregon Tax Revolt of the ’90s.

But (and this is a big “but”) we may be nearing the tipping point. Let’s remember that no democracy has ever chosen a libertarian government (is that an oxymoron?). The trend, as evident in the rest of the industrialized world, is to move toward social democracy. Maybe we’re just behind the curve, as Moravcsick suggests. While we’ve been moving steadily towards libertarianism, I think people may be starting to wake up to the fact that it’s not really in their interest to do so.