The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics

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From one of the country s most admired political thinkers, an urgent wake up call to American liberals to turn from the divisive politics of identity and develop a vision of our future that can persuade all citizens that they share a common destiny In The Once and Future Liberal, Mark Lilla offers an impassioned, tough minded, and stinging look at the failure of American liberalism over the past two generations Although there have been Democrats in the White House, and some notable policy achievements, for nearly 40 years the vision that Ronald Reagan offered small government, lower taxes, and self reliant individualism has remained the country s dominant political ideology And the Democratic Party has offered no convincing competing vision in response.Instead, as Lilla argues, American liberalism fell under the spell of identity politics, with disastrous consequences Driven originally by a sincere desire to protect the most vulnerable Americans, the left has now unwittingly balkanized the electorate, encouraged self absorption rather than solidarity, and invested its energies in social movements rather than in party politics With dire consequences Lilla goes on to show how the left s identity focused individualism insidiously conspired with the amoral economic individualism of the Reaganite right to shape an electorate with little sense of a shared future and near contempt for the idea of the common good In the contest for the American imagination, liberals have abdicated.Now they have an opportunity to reset The left is motivated, and the Republican Party, led by an unpredictable demagogue, is in ideological disarray To seize this opportunity, Lilla insists, liberals must concentrate their efforts on recapturing our institutions by winning elections The time for hectoring is over It is time to reach out and start persuading people from every walk of life and in every region of the country that liberals will stand up for them We must appeal to but also help to rebuild a sense of common feeling among Americans, and a sense of duty to each other.A fiercely argued, no nonsense book, enlivened by Lilla s acerbic wit and erudition, The Once and Future Liberal is essential reading for our momentous times. Read The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics – kino-fada.fr A slim incendiary volume that expands upon Lilla s infamous November 2016 NYTimes op ed, The End of Identity Liberalism It may be impossible to read this book neutrally and, as a liberal historian deeply disenchanted with the American Left, Lilla certainly writes with the all fervor of a Calvinist preacher trying to save the damned And it is easy to critique Lilla s glibly summarized history of the past 80 years of American politics Still, this book is a fascinating read with some A slim incendiary volume that expands upon Lilla s infamous November 2016 NYTimes op ed, The End of Identity Liberalism It may be impossible to read this book neutrally and, as a liberal historian deeply disenchanted with the American Left, Lilla certainly writes with the all fervor of a Calvinist preacher trying to save the damned And it is easy to critique Lilla s glibly summarized h...THE ONCE AND FUTURE LIBERAL is a short polemic written for a politically liberal audience with the goal of reinvigorating the electoral prospects of the Democratic Party in the United States ONCE AND FUTURE was written in response to Hillary Clinton s surprising loss last November It is most decidedly not a book directed to a conservative audience Yet, many of the reviews that one finds in GoodReads are from conservatives Perhaps, even most of the reviews come from conservatives This caused THE ONCE AND FUTURE LIBERAL is a short polemic written for a politically liberal audience with the goal of reinvigorating the electoral prospects of the Democratic Party in the United States ONCE AND FUTURE was written in response to Hillary Clinton s surprising loss last November It is most decidedly not a book directed to a conservative audience Yet, many of the reviews that one finds in GoodReads are from conservative...My tepid rating has as much to do with my own weariness as with anything Lilla writes At the most general level and there s not much specific in this short book I agree with Lilla s argument.What s extraordinary and appalling about the past four decades of our history is that our politics have been dominated by two ideologies that encourage and even celebrate the unmaking of citizens On the right, an ideology that questions the existence of a common good and denies our obligation to My tepid rating has as much to do with my own weariness as with anything Lilla writes At the most general level and there s not much specific in this short book I agree with Lilla s argument.What s extraordinary and appalling about the past four decades of our history is that our politics have been dominated by two ideologies that encourage and even celebrate the unmaking of citizens On the right, an ideology that questions the existence of a common good and denies our obligation to help fellow citizens, through government action if necessary On the left, an ideology institutionalized in colleges and universities that fetishizes our individual and group attachments, applauds self absorption, and casts a s...Mark Lilla has been a bad, bad boy He has dared to point out the feet of clay upon which stand King Liberal, and he, like Cassandra, will not be thanked Still, this short book is an excellent political analysis, and it points the way, if only loosely, to a wholly new order of things, thus starting to answer my perennial question, What is next Lilla s project is to rescue modern liberalism from the dead end sewer of identity politics His purpose in doing so is, in part, simple intellectual Mark Lilla has been a bad, bad boy He has dared to point out the feet of clay upon which stand King Liberal, and he, like Cassandra, will not be thanked Still, this short book is an excellent political analysis, and it points the way, if only loosely, to a wholly new order of things, thus starting to answer my perennial question, What is next Lilla s project is to rescue modern liberalism from the dead end sewer of identity politics His purpose in doing so is, in part, s...This is a non fic critique of the current obsession of democrats with identity politics It should be said that the author is a liberal and his points a bit Marxist, so it is not a denier or a right winger, who tries to protect a straight white man.His idea is that up until the 1960s, those active in liberal and progressive politics were drawn largely from the working class or farm communities Now activists and leaders are formed almost exclusively in colleges and universities, as are members This is a non fic critique of the current obsession of democrats with identity politics It should be said that the author is a liberal and his points a bit Marxist, so it is not a denier or a right winger, who tries to protect a straight white man.His idea is that up until the 1960s, those active in liberal and progressive politics were drawn largely from the working class or farm communities Now activists and leaders are formed almost exclusively in colleges and universities, as are members of the mainly liberal professions of law, journalism, and education Liberal political education now takes place, if it takes place at all, on campuses that are largely detached socially and geographically from the rest of the country The openness and attempts at collective actions, we the citizens are largely replaced by me and my identity , so that JFK s challenge, What can I do for my country which ...Fact There are currently 34 Republican state Governors.Fact There are currently 32 states in which Republicans control both houses of Congress there s also weird ol Nebraska, which has only one house of Congress Republicans control that one, too, of course.Fact There are Republican majorities in the U.S House of Representatives and Senate.Fact There is a Republican president in office He s fucking insaneFact There is a definite rightward slant to the U.S Supreme Court, and to the Fact There are currently 34 Republican state Governors.Fact There are currently 32 states in which Republicans control both houses of Congress there s also weird ol Nebraska, which has only one house of Congress Republicans control that one, too, of course.Fact There are Republican majorities in the U.S House of Representatives and Senate.Fact There is a Republican president in office He s fucking insaneFact There is a definite rightward slant to the U.S Supreme Court, and to the nation s judiciary at large.Fact Liberals cannot win fucking elections for shitMark Lilla has written a book that left leaning people need to read, plain and simple Most lefties will disagree with some of it a lot of us will disagree with a lot of it Many of us will write it off based on a single poorly chosen ...Wow Between this and Fragile by Design The Political Origins of Banking Crises Scarce Design, by Charles W Calomiris and Stephen H Haber, it is hard to offer any defense of the performance of Baby Boomer progressives.What Lilla misses, in evaluating the rise of Trump, is the unwillingness of Baby Boomers, across the political spectrum, to share He does capture what John Rawls was getting at with his Concept of an Overlapping Consensus.Trump is the apotheosis of Baby Boomer rule Wow Between this and Fragile by Design The Politica...This is the worst response to the post Trump crisis of the Democratic Party I have seen so far The core issue with Lilla s book is that he has a muddled and inconsistent understanding of relationship between individualism and Liberalism This, for an author who is an intellectual historian and is a self proclaimed Liberal, is extremely embarrassing.Lilla critiques at length the individualism of Reagan s politics, claiming that it destroyed the concept of citizenship , which entailed both This is the worst response to the post Trump crisis of the Democratic Party I have seen so far The core ...If Al Gore had not already taken the title, Mark Lilla could have easily called his book An Inconvenient Truth The Once and Future Liberal is a damning indictment of modern liberalism s infatuation with identity politics and its compulsion to segment and hyphenate Americans.Lilla, himself a liberal and academic, shows how liberalism has veered so far off track and the far reaching consequences this has h...I imagine this book will be mocked by many However, Lilla s call for our politics to think and feel through the lens of citizenship could be an amelioration for our discourse Doubt enters when we ask from where will this mood originate.I am not sure Lilla s argument will win his party over But everyone should at least consider his arguments We all need to start living outside o...

The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics
  • 03 August 2018
  • Hardcover
  • 160 pages
  • 0062697439
  • Mark Lilla
  • The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics