The Crisis of Liberalism: Prelude to Trump

by Fred Siegel
With a Foreword by Joel Kotkin

Also available in Kindle ebook format from Amazon.com.

In The Crisis of Liberalism: Prelude to Trump, Fred Siegel leverages New York City to uncover the key political conflicts and social contradictions in American liberalism over the last century. This wide-ranging collection of essays critically recounts how passionate intellectual debates and then heated cultural struggles over how to realize "the good life" in the modern city emerged from the writings of early progressive "thought leaders." Herbert Croly and H. G. Wells once envisioned college graduates as a new elite that could pick up the project of enlightened democratic governance where the European aristocracy had failed. Yet, as Eric Hoffer observed, these graduates left top-notch schools as liberal technocrats wanting "power, lordship, and opportunities for imposing action."

The flaws in this approach expressed themselves most floridly in John Lindsay's New York, as his activist top-level experts and their many bottom-tier clients aligned themselves against the material aspirations and cultural values of the five boroughs' middle social strata. Lindsay's flashy limousine liberals were a preview of today's politically correct gentry liberalism. Its cultural programs over the past half-century, as Siegel shows, ultimately failed the downtrodden underclass and alienated middle-class New Yorkers trapped in economic stagnation after 9/11. While Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sparred over policy minutiae in the heated 2008 Democratic Party primaries, both candidates neglected voters' worries, like illegal immigrants or China's emerging threats. This misdirection of the nation's and the city's politics by globalist technocratic liberals became the prelude to Donald Trump's angry nationalist demand to put "America First."

Fred Siegel on the Telos Press Podcast

On the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan and Russell Berman talk with Fred Siegel about The Crisis of Liberalism. Siegel discusses the growth of the administrative state, the similarities between former New York City mayor John Lindsay and Barack Obama, the Black Lives Matter movement, the echoes of the 1960s in today’s politics, and the rise of left-wing fascism. Listen:

Praise for Fred Siegel's The Crisis of Liberalism

"Fred Siegel is the last of the New York intellectuals and a prescient observer of the American political and intellectual scene. Whether Siegel is writing about New York politics, the impact of rioting on cities, the origins of the 'top-down' political coalition created by 'gentry liberals,' or the roots of liberals' disdain for the middle class, these essays are deeply relevant to understanding the turbulence and divisions that plague our nation today."
—Vincent J. Cannato, author of The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York

"Whether he's deep-diving into the intellectual origins of modern American liberalism or bemoaning the destruction of his favorite Brooklyn restaurant in the New York riots of 1977, Fred Siegel's work has a punchy, streetwise authority, born of academic knowledge and commonsense experience. Taken together, this collection of Siegel's best essays and articles is a magisterial overview of the radical impulses and feckless politics that upended so much of American life in the 1960s and 1970s—only to emerge in toxic new forms today. If history doesn't repeat itself, Siegel's work shows us how it rhymes."
—E. J. McMahon, Senior Fellow, Empire Center for Public Policy

"Fred Siegel shows how progressive politics has turned into a partnership of the wealthy with (some of) the poor, while they both hold the middle and working classes in contempt. He explains how limousine liberals have come to treat good governance by elite experts as superior to self-government by the voters they call deplorable, and he traces how liberalism has come to this impasse through his astute analyses and insightful prose. Beautifully written, this book takes you on a guided tour through a century of American intellectual history and the politics of New York City, ground zero for progressive planning.
—Russell A. Berman, Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University

Contents

Foreword: Unmasking the Urban Emperors
Joel Kotkin

Introduction: Liberalism and the Long 1960s

I. The Intellectual Origins of Modern American Liberalism

1. Herbert Croly's American Bismarcks
2. The Godfather of American Liberalism
3. It Can't Happen Here
4. The Anti-American Fallacy
5. A Camelot Minute
6. The Agony of Christopher Lasch
7. The Many Misunderstandings of Richard Hofstadter
8. Is Archie Bunker Fit to Rule? Or: How Immanuel Kant Became One of the Founding Fathers

II. The Sixties in Trump's Hometown

9. William F. Buckley's Unmaking of a Mayor
10. When Limousine Liberals Took Center Stage
11. John Lindsay's Bright, Shining Failure

III. The Long Sixties in America

12. 1968 and the Ongoing Revolt against the Masses
13. Forever 1968
14. Working Man Blues
15. Moynihan: The Moment Lost, by Fred Siegel and Peter Cove

IV. The Twenty-First Century: 2007–2010

16. William Jennings Huckabee
17. Hillary's "No"
18. Whose New Gilded Age?
19. The Gentry Liberals, by Fred Siegel and Joel Kotkin
20. The Anti-Perot
21. The Againstocrats
22. Competitive Victimization
23. The Globalization Election
24. Rotten
25. Progressives against Progress
26. Tea and Hostility

V. Top and Bottom vs. the Middle

27. Who Lost the Middle Class?
28. Occupy Wall Street and the Return of the McGovernites
29. The New Authoritarianism, by Fred Siegel and Joel Kotkin
30. The Middle Class and Its Enemies
31. The Liberal Top–Bottom Coalition
32. Dudes and Democrats
33. Fracking, Poverty, and the New Liberal Gentry
34. The Midwest Will Rise Again
35. A Grotesque Pantomime of Repression and Redemption
36. Divided, They'll Fall
37. Moynihan's Mistake and the Left's Shame
38. The Riot Ideology, Reborn
39. The House Divided
40. What Post-Communism Hath Wrought

VI. Somewhat Personal

41. Not-So-Macho Mailer
42. My Political Reeducation

ISBN 978-0-914386-77-3 (paperback) • 978-0-914386-78-0 (ebook)
Pub. Dates: October 1, 2020 (paperback) • September 15, 2020 (ebook)
286 pages