The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class Author: Fred Siegel | Language: English | ISBN:
B00F21VXXK | Format: EPUB
The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class Description
This short book rewrites the history of modern American liberalism. It shows that what we think of liberalism today—the top-and-bottom coalition we associate with President Obama—began not with Progressivism or the New Deal but rather in the wake of the post-WWI disillusionment with American society. In the Twenties, the first writers and thinkers to call themselves liberals adopted the hostility to bourgeois life that had long characterized European intellectuals of both the left and the right. The aim of liberalism’s founding writers and thinkers—such as Herbert Croly, Randolph Bourne, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis, and H.L Mencken—was to create an American aristocracy of sorts, to provide the sense of hierarchy and order that had long been associated with European statism.
Like communism, Fabianism, and fascism, modern liberalism was born of a new class of politically self-conscious intellectuals. Critical of mass democracy and middle-class capitalism, liberals despised the individual businessman’s pursuit of profit as well as the conventional individual’s pursuit of pleasure, both of which were made possible by the lineaments of the limited nineteenth-century state.
Temporarily waylaid by the heroism of the WWII generation, liberalism expressed itself in the 1950s as a critique of popular culture. It was precisely the success of a recently elevated middle-class culture that frightened foppish characters such as Dwight Macdonald and Aldous Huxley, crucial influences on what was mistakenly called the New Left. There was no New Left in the 1960s, but there was a New Class that in the midst of Vietnam and race riots took up the priestly task of de-democratizing America in the name of administering newly developed rights
The neo-Malthusianism that emerged from the 1960s did not aim to control the breeding habits of the lower classes, as its eugenicist precursors had done, but to mock and restrain the buying habits of the middle class.
Today’s Barack Obama brand of liberalism has displaced the old Main Street private-sector middle class with a new middle class composed of public-sector workers allied with crony capitalists and the country’s arbiters of style and taste.
- File Size: 442 KB
- Print Length: 242 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1594036985
- Publisher: Encounter Books (January 28, 2014)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00F21VXXK
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,415 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Democracy - #11
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Political Science > History & Theory - #15
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Democracy
- #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Democracy - #11
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Political Science > History & Theory - #15
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Democracy
If the terms Liberal, neo-liberal, gentry liberal, neo-con, Progressive, and Conservative confuse you, you’re not alone. Siegel describes when, why and how those terms came into use in the United States. If you’re curious about all the variations of liberal and conservative we have today in the US, Fred tells you in this short book.
His main thesis is that the highest and the lowest classes of society today have joined together in a struggle against the middle class ("a top/bottom coalition"). That idea may seem crazy to you. However, he lays out enough facts to convince you, if you’re really willing to consider them, while comparing them to your own political beliefs.
My one complaint is that the author doesn’t list specific references for all the statements and books he quotes. The vague name and year given for a person or group’s writings, speeches, or books on politics makes deeper searches harder for us, but not impossible.
By JackBluegrass
Mr. Siegel has hit the nail squarely on the head. There is so much truth in this book that it ought to be required reading.
By Majority Member
The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class Preview
Link
Please Wait...