The subtitle is How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class and the author is Fred Siegel (2013).
There are times when I read books to challenge my beliefs. This time is not one of them. Given the current political environment, and my sense that liberal outrage is an exercise in hypocrisy, I sought out a well-regarded argument that might confirm my understanding. Such is this book, as it takes us back in time to the roots of today’s liberal progressive agenda, and elucidates how it has always sought to impose the will of the elite on the perceived philistines and hoi polloi.
The progenitors are people like H.G. Wells, H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, Randolph Bourne, and Herbert Croly. Let’s start out by noting that all were believers in eugenics, which wasn’t deemed a bad thing until it became integral to Nazism. Moreover, all were big believers in the disinterested technocrat guiding the morally unsophisticated and unintelligent masses. They also all admired the Bolsheviks and frowned upon the economic motive. To wit: “We were all sworn foes of capitalism, not because we knew it would not work, but because we judged it, even in success, to be lethal to the human spirit.” This strand of ideology was very much at the heart of the New Deal and influenced its creation, as it drew on the same circle of professionals and professors who thought so much of Moscow. As such, it was a manifestation of the perceived solution to class conflict, more than just an answer to the Great Depression – not surprisingly, it was the genesis of so many social welfare programs that still exist today.
As a general observation, liberalism was an expression of “European Socialist parties rewritten in the language of rights”. Whether the New Deal programs earlier on, or the legal changes that came out of the ‘60s, it was an attempt to have the central power administer how humans should interact. Don’t get me wrong, as I have no objection to civil rights and personal liberties, but when all too often such decisions come out of the Supreme Court rather than majoritarian-ism, there is a disconnect between what the Democratic process is supposed to be and how morals and ideals are actually being implemented.
So, if I were to take anything away from this book, it is that good intentions matter more than outcomes in looking at the progression of this movement. Proving the point that not every problem can have a solution.
As an interesting tangent, the response to the 1980 presidential election might be useful. Over the course of that campaign, Democrats sought to turn the Republicans into populists, as Reagan was the outsider candidate trying to bring morning back to America after the turbulent 1970s of stagflation and high unemployment. While claiming the moral high ground, unfortunately for liberals their policy regime had left a country that was teetering – and in winning, Reagan engendered unexpected support from white working class Democrats (sound familiar?). The response from the losing side was vitriol (sigh) and nothing that resembled a re-think on ideas. The social programs were failures, as poverty continued to rise, but were now re-imagined as rights and racial justice (did they march the day after the inauguration also?). I would remind everyone that this book was written years before the Trump phenomena. And maybe what we are seeing yet again from the resistance – actually what I believe is going on in earnest – is the easy pivot that liberals make between acceptance and rejection depending upon who is in power.
