American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time

by Joshua Mitchell

America has always been committed to the idea that citizens can work together to build a common world. Today, three afflictions keep us from pursuing that noble ideal. The first and most obvious affliction is identity politics, which seeks to transform America by turning politics into a religious venue of sacrificial offering. For now, the sacrificial scapegoat is the white, heterosexual, man. After he is humiliated and purged, who will be the object of cathartic rage? White women? Black men? Identity politics is the anti-egalitarian spiritual eugenics of our age. It demands that pure and innocent groups ascend, and the stained transgressor groups be purged.

The second affliction is that citizens oscillate back and forth, in bipolar fashion, at one moment feeling invincible on their social media platforms and, the next, feeling impotent to face the everyday problems of life without the guidance of experts and global managers. Third, Americans are afflicted by a disease that cannot quite be named, characterized by an addictive hope that they can find cheap shortcuts that bypass the difficult labors of everyday life. Instead of real friendship, we seek social media “friends.”

Instead of meals at home, we order “fast food.” Instead of real shopping, we “shop” online. Instead of counting on our families and neighbors to address our problems, we look to the state to take care of us. In its many forms, this disease promises release from our labors, yet impoverishes us all. American Awakening chronicles all of these problems, yet gives us hope for the future.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Cultural, Philosophy, Religion, History, Current Affairs

312 pages, Paperback

Published December 13, 2022

About the author

Joshua Mitchell is a professor of Government at Georgetown University and a “1776 Unites” partner.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A qualified 5 stars. Well-written, dense but able to be understood, with informative endnotes and copious citations. I highly doubt you'll find many bite-sized quotes to share... instead there are in-depth arguments and hard-hitting paragraphs.

I think the majority of Mitchell's conclusions are spot-on, though the Epilogue, "Wuhan Flu," is rather unfortunate. While some of its arguments and conclusions are good, I think he misses the mark for how exceptional 2020 was. Overall there is a depth of insight about a specific, contemporary value system which when rightly handled and understood enables greater empathy. I highly recommend this book, even if one disagrees with the entirety of his text, because if read charitably (with an eye to understanding it) you will know the intellectual underpinnings of the opinions of close to half the US.

[Drew Norwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although identity politics is the main topic of the book, I thought the secondary topic of "addiction" was the most impactful. The discussion of identity politics was good but not exceptional, and much has been written about this area already. In contrast, by utilizing the principle of addiction and applying it to our society, Mitchell offers a unique view of our social ailments.

Mitchell defines addiction as turning supplements into substitutes: "when the supplement becomes a substitute, we become addicted." If a vitamin supplement replaces a meal rather than "supplementing" it, we have lost something. Even if the vitamin were to contain all the nutrients of the meal, you still have lost the family dinner, the act of cooking and preparing the meal, the conversation and table fellowship, the knowledge of the foods being consumed, etc. In this vein, Mitchell points to ways in which our society has become addicted to supplements. Think of our society’s preoccupation with social media, not as a supplement to real-life friendships, but too often as a replacement for face-to-face relationships and interaction; or think of fast food, plastics, online education, government welfare programs, fiat currency, and digital technology in general.  Each of these supplements is replacing the very things they were intended to supplement. And our addictions are only getting worse.

When we turn supplements into the meal, we bypass (lose) the meal of competence. And "liberal competence" is the very thing Mitchell identifies as foundational to republican government. I was skeptical at first of "liberal competence" as an adequate anchor, but the idea grew on me over the course of the book. Liberal competence is the ability to govern oneself and to participate in the work of self-government which is central to our republic. Mitchell's vision of liberal competence left me with a mental picture of the Ox-Cart Man, or a pioneer family on the great plains, as paragons of liberal competence. A person who is capable of meeting challenges, who stewards his resources well, and who is community-minded rather than self-serving.

Mitchell's assessment is that we are currently a society living on borrowed time. Having lost the competence to live as responsible citizens of a strong and healthy society, we are extracting the benefits from the past generations while not contributing anything back. This is unsustainable. But for a drastic change in the way we live and govern ourselves, our republic will waste away.

[Marcas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic!

Joshua Mitchell provides a profound analysis and nuanced history of what has been labelled the 'woke religion' and a genuine alternative via a renewed and layered Christian faith.

Mitchell's orthopraxy is one which places 'innocence' and 'guilt' in their proper theological place, taking them away from the realm of politics and a violent managerial state, one which takes what is good in 'liberalism' and recalibrates it, one which speaks to the key questions of 'identity' that the new woke religion is seeking to answer, and much more besides.

Mitchell goes way beyond the usual analysis by bringing transhumanism, antinatalism, and Friedrich Nietzsche's alternative theories into view. With Nietzsche, and the quasi-pagan spirit he represents, encouraging the alt-right to forget the Judeo-Christian categories altogether. Rather than misplace them as the new left does. Joshua wrestles with them, and like Jacob, emerges victorious.

Mitchell offers a third way and a positive vision of competence that treats persons as incarnate and multifaceted. His is a tremendous alternative to dehumanising ideology and technological 'solutions' which create more problems because they do not apprentice us, nor form us in healthy relationships with God, others, the creation, or the society.
This Christian vision of mankind as created in God's image and likeness frees us from the wild bipolar pendulum of 'selfie man', tossed about by the tumultuous waves of history one moment and 'secure' in our illusions of ultimate power the next.

We are sinners, saved by Grace, and can partake in the good life through embodied living- with families, gardening, free associations, and so on. In this respect, Mitchell is like Simone Weil and Christopher Lasch before him. He is helping us to remember and to return to our roots.

One of the very best books on the topic and a high resolution map for the journey! See Ben's review for a more in-depth analysis.

[Daniel Nelms · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mitchell, Georgetown University professor of political theory, has written a well learned, thoroughly conservative, study that engages the hop-topic of identity politics, the opioid crisis, Covid-19, as well as a host of other issues. It also serves as a commentary of sorts on Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

His general thesis is based on Christian/theological assumptions that most of our current society and all of its efforts to face the crises of our day, and the stains of our American past, with a sort of religious, almost fundamental Puritan like effort while not embracing any belief in God or original sin. In other words, we are trying now to build a new a world that is stain-free of past transgressions, presently suffering-free, and avoiding death and oppression at all costs while bringing complete economic equality to all.

In order to get there, says Mitchell, those who embrace Identity Politics must remove those who have transgressed against us (the white heterosexual male) in a scapegoating fashion and embrace a new future that is separate and new from all the WHM has accomplished in Western history. Identity politics according to Mitchell views most all of western history built by WHM as stained with racism and oppression, and thus in a Leviticus 16 Yom Kippur fashion, they and their history must be sent into the wilderness of 'cancel culture' and removed as much as possible from societal thought and imagination.

It is hard to lay out quotes from Mitchell as it is not a very quotable book, but carefully construed arguments that take paragraphs and pages to bring to conclusion. But in general, much of this can be brought in parallel to Christian thinking. For example, looking at the book of Exodus, when the angel of death passed over the camp to remove the sinner-first born of the Egyptians (the transgressors), the Israelites could avoid death by painting the doorpost with the blood of a sacrificial lamb.

Virtue signaling, according to Mitchell, is equivalent to painting your doorpost with the blood of a lamb if you are to avoid the cultural death of cancel culture, especially if you are in any way identified with the WHM.

The problem with all of this, as Mitchell argues, is that it'll never be enough. If we are to understand humankind as suffering from Original Sin, then there will always be transgression among us. Identity Politics is casting a vision of the world that lacks forgiveness, only punishment and removal of the transgressors. But when is this sort of justice satisfied? It is in danger of leading our society into a spiral of never-ending efforts to try and rebuild our world stain-free from racism, stain-free from oppression, and to give equality to every person and all people at all costs, which if you have a basic theological understanding of humankind as sinners, we see that this project will only get more extreme in its efforts and always fall short of success. It is likened to the early Puritans who built the new world in their own extreme fundamental image, leading to

We need a divine human, one who is truly innocent, who could somehow pay for all the transgressions of humankind and offer forgiveness for sinner in this world, in which we all identify as. This is the Christian vision. And the utopian end of the Christian vision is Jesus returning to make all things new - forever removing racism, death, oppression, hunger, starvation, mourning, and so forth. Identity Politics seeks to shortcut the divine scapegoat and the divine salvation by trying to build that future perfect world now.

This is also leading us to a Brave New World where we are striving to find the quickest shortcuts to that world as possible. Mitchell in the second-half of the book (in a bit repetitive form) reveals how democracy, when an understanding of sin and liberal competence is removed, will lead to non-stop efforts of escapism, death-avoidance (i.e. our extreme global efforts in the fight against Covid-19), quick access to entertainment and comfort and the avoidance of hard things, and even the government's recent efforts to simply give away money to all Americans to avoid immediate economic hardship with seemingly little concern for the future impact of a sudden infusion of trillions and trillions of dollars into our economy.

It's a fascinating book. It becomes predictable as you turn the pages. And if you understand the traditional conservative political vision, you will anticipate what Mitchell says, which is fine for what it is. But he does avoid, as many conservatives do, honesty regarding original sin as applied to all people in America. If you remember early American history, when we had more state-based freedom and a smaller federal government, the sinning humans who ran the southern states did freely choose to enslave other human beings. What restraints must we have in place to actually remove oppression with free citizens in a democracy freely choose to oppress? Step in the federal government. Perhaps Identity Politics is an overstep, a vision lacking coherence as to actually being able to accomplish its purposes. But ultimately a complete and total "conservative" or almost libertarian vision for America will fall short for the same reasons that a totally progressive vision of America politics will: people will mess it up.

There is more I could mention in a critical manner towards Mitchell's book, but I am out of time.

The Christian vision remains the only place of hope. In Christ we find payment for transgression, forgiveness of all sin, and a vision for equality in Christ as image bearers of God that can be gathered together in a single family beneath God. This is something all political efforts are given towards. And as no civilization lasts forever, as no nation-state lasts forever, we still lie in need of Jesus and his blood, his resurrection and his return.

Regardless of the books expected shortcomings, I do think that everyone really should read it and have the ability to take a honest look at his arguments. They are built on thousands of years of conversations, from Plato to Rousseau to Voltaire and Tocqueville and of course the Bible. Mitchell's argument is not out of a vacuum. America would do well to interact with Mitchell's arguments if we are to help bring the pendulum swing back to a healthy place.

[Susie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The beginning of this book was very difficult for me to read and keep track of the line of thought. For that, I blame my own love of “reading for entertainment” rather than for acquiring information and benefitting from the deeper thinking of others. I reread many, many sentences until, if not fully understanding them, I “got their drift.” By Part Two, I was either becoming more familiar with the author’s style or the analogies used simply made it easier for me to grasp and the remainder of the book got and kept my attention. Although I will probably not be adept at quoting the text, there are definitely themes that are very memorable and will continue to give me pause. I was quite convicted regarding “supplements becoming substitutes” in my own life and aspire to be more discerning where these temptations occur for me.

Although I did not find the author’s understanding of our current culture encouraging, I do believe that it is valid. This makes me more glad than ever that I have faith in a sovereign God that foresaw all of this and will eventually have His will done on earth as it is in heaven!

And I have “Democracy in America” on hold at my library for the next available copy. Wish me luck! 😉

[Jeffrey Brannen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished “American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time” by Joshua Mitchell. 

He argues that there have been four Great Awakenings in American history:

A.) First Great Awakening (1730-1740s) — the church didn’t need to be reformed, but revived. IOW, the church was dead but the Holy Spirit was reviving dead congregations and starting new ones. In the spirit of independence, you don’t need the established church because the Holy Spirit blows where he wills. Great lights in this period: Jonathan Edwards, George Whitfield, John and Charles Wesley. 

B.) Second Great Awakening (1790s-1820s) �� revival was still necessary because the existing churches were corrupt. However, these revivals could be scheduled and manufactured through camp meetings, the anxious bench, and altar calls. Not only do you not need the established church, you also don’t need to wait on the Holy Spirit at all. Revival preachers could create revival. Principal figure here was Charles Finney and his New Measures. (To read about the contrast between the 1st and 2nd Awakenings, I’d direct your attention to Iain Murray’s “Revival and Revivalism”.)

C.) The third Awakening (1880s-1910s) — was religious but rejected the substitution of Jesus’ sacrificial atonement on the cross. It was Christianity without the embarrassment of the divine Christ and the bodily resurrection from the tomb. Religion without Revelation or Miracles. The goal of Christianity was to be good and moral and to teach society to be the same. This Awakening goes by the names of the Social Gospel and Modernism. Principal figures: J. Gresham Machen and Harry Emerson Fosdick. (To read more about this Awakening, I’d recommend Machen’s “Christianity and Liberalism” which contrasts historic Christianity with the Christless Christianity of the 20th century.)

D.) The fourth Awakening (Joshua Mitchell would argue) is happening around us today. The previous three Awakenings have taught us that we don’t need the church, the Spirit, or the divine Christ and resurrection, just be a good person and pursue social justice. The current Awakening removes God entirely from the picture. Identity politics or more formally, Critical Race Theory, removes the God who judges and the God who forgives. Guilt or innocence is determined by group identity and there is no possibility of forgiveness for transgressions because they are irredeemable. 

If Joshua Mitchell is right, then the religious zealotry and witch hunts we see all around us are completely understandable in a world of sins and transgressions but with no church, no Spirit, no divine Christ, and no Heavenly Father who judges and forgives. Wrongs cannot be waited out and left for God to handle, they must be judged now. 

If you’ve read this far, my advice would be to recover the vast importance of the local church, the need for the Spirit to work salvation in the hearts of unregenerate men and women, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for your salvation, and to lay in the Father’s hands our own sin and failures along with the sins and failures of others. 

Soli Deo Gloria

[Drtaxsacto · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are few books that I read in a year which I would describe as profound, but this one is one of them. Mitchell, who is a political philosopher at Georgetown begins with some basic and seemingly disparate premises which I will describe later but his basic thoughts are on the consequences of what he (and DeTocqueville) described as civic competence - the ability of citizens to take care of the necessary things that society needs to accomplish. He argues that our basic civic competence is being drained.

His thinking integrates an interesting combination of the Bible, Adam Smith and DeTocqueville - but that is only a starting place. Mitchell argues (in my opinion persuasively) that there are at least three causes of the declines. They include the rise of woke, the increasing use of opioids and what he describes as the toxic combination of professional man - global managers (where uncertainties can be unloaded from the public) and selfie selves who retreat into an increasingly cocooned world. Unfortunately things like COVID, the financial disasters of fiat currencies and the financial meltdown(s) have demonstrated that global managers have been shown to be increasingly incompetent.

Woke substitutes a biblical notion of original sin (which delays blame by the sacrifice of an innocent)with a transformation into a single class of transgressors. Those transgressors are always at fault but the other classes (what the progressives describe in the units of intersectionality) as long as they demonize the transgressors, will never be held culpable. More importantly they will never be required to think about intelligent solutions to the vexing questions of inequality. Their rhetoric serves as a cover to ignoring serious discussion of alternative solutions.

There are several problems with that set of assumptions. First, the solutions proposed by the woke (and the professional managers) don’t seem to advance a reasonable notion of justice. As as John Rawls described the first virtue of social institutions is justice. But the woke turn that concept on its head. The search for justice increasingly becomes an endless meander. The woke also create a bipolar world where hopelessness is conflated with invincibility.

Mitchell also has an extended discussion of the differences between supplements and substitutes. For example he argues that fast food is a supplement to real food but by the increasingly heavy use of those products we lose the social aspects of meals which serve to nourish both the body and our ability to work together. We move to something which augments our lives to something which changes them.

I am at least in part skeptical of his discussion of supplements to substitutes in his discussion of e-commerce. As Amazon grew to become the default market for many products (first books, then almost everything) many bookstores perished. Mitchell worries that Amazon encourages buyers to look at products in brick and mortar stores and then buy on Amazon and that can and does happen. That is what Schumpeter called “creative destruction”. But as technology has evolved there are numerous examples of brick and mortar and e-stores supplementing each other. Two are most prominent in my mind. Apple sold through third party distributors. They have a robust online store. BUT the development of Apple stores has supplemented the possibility to expand brand reach. When I have a problem with an Apple product I can go online and search a database, or I can go into a store and have a genius session. I’ve used both. Best Buy sells a lot of technology through its brick and mortar stores but also online. They have been one of the best at tying technology support in store, with on line and even in your home. New models will undoubtedly develop.

For Mitchell a lot of the problems we face are caused by the confluence of the issues described above. In Teddy Roosevelt’s time we understood the concept of stewardship - but increasingly environmentalists are stuck on mandates, mostly from government. I never cease to be amused at how environmentalist hector us to be more “green” while jet setting to the next international conference and in turn then demand that we no longer use readily available technologies and substitute new materials which are often mined in very un-environmental conditions.

Professor Mitchell is not without some suggestions for restoring balance here. He proposes some ideas about refortifying the middle class commercial society that the Founders envisaged. At the same time he suggests that we need to make substantive progress on reconciling the sins of slavery (he is pretty clear that is not by doing reparations - but he does suggest that we need to attack both the debilitating policies of the left which have stripped that Black community of a regenerative family model and the denial policies of the right which seem to think that our problem with the “peculiar institution” has been solved. There are some solitary voices in the Black community who argue that re-establishing community while reducing government programs could help to restore the Black middle class which was building until the expansions of the Great Society. He also believes we need to do some work differentiating the Market and Use value of commodities (the things in a good or commodity which satisfy a human need). Use value is something that both Smith and Marx discussed and I will confess I had to go back and read up on the concept. Finally, he suggests that we need to figure out a way to combine a robust foreign policy which recognizes the appropriate value of nations without either the nonsense of the right (let’s install our system everywhere) versus the left (let’s ignore borders and simultaneously adhering to increasing deference to professional managers).

He comes up with a novel concept called the Adam 69 virus which is the recognition that all of us will die and we need to deal with that reality but not in the sense that many of the public policy people did during COVID to protect us from death.

The problem of substituting mediating institutions for ritual judgements will have terrible consequences for our society - Mitchell helped me think about the causes of those transformations and also some ways to think about ways to avoid these moral hazards. It Audible were to allow a rating higher than 5 I would certainly offer it.

[Kevin Prewitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Awakening Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time by Joshua Mitchell is thoughtful and intelligent. He espouses that the church is in decline and Identity Politics attempts to fill the void.

Identity Politics seeks reconciliation between an ever increasing number of people groups by scapegoating the oppressors. Today the oppressors are white heterosexual men. This scapegoating is made necessary by the rejection of original sin and true reconciliation provided by the atonement of Jesus.

Mitchell also discusses how supplements have become substitutes. Two examples stand out. One Facebook friends have become substitutes for actual friends with devastating loneliness and isolation. Second, the Nanny State is a substitute for competent liberal Americans working together to build a world and solutions.
American Awakening deserves reading and discussion on a broad scale.

[Logan Heinrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Substantive. Worth the effort to get through it. It is a remarkably Christian book which was refreshingly surprising.

[Judson Marvel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mitchell covers identity politics, bipolarity, and addiction and how they endanger a liberal democracy. Though he states that identity politics has no single "proponent", he defines it as the relationship between transgressor and innocent. Bipolarity is the tension between management society and selfie. Addiction is the problem when supplements become substitutes. Solutions to these dangers include the Christian teachings of incarnation (only innocent), atonement, forgiveness, and hope. He also mentions the liberal politics of competence as people working together. The three pillars of renewal are a commitment to the middle-class, friendship, and a modest foreign policy.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mitchell central thesis about the a religious revival without Christianity is a thought provoking hypothesis about the current nature of American culture. The central premise about the Awakening being a revival is well argued but I think lacks explanation why identity politics took hold in American discourse over other potential revivals such as environmentalism or nationalism. The two other afflictions are bipolarity and addiction could have been separate books if expounded upon. Delightful to read and could be enhanced in revised addition with additional content on bipolarity and addiction.

[Terrence D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily likely to be one of the best books I'll have read this year (top 10?).

Given some time, I'll write a fitting review, but for now, this will have to suffice.

Outstanding work.

[Kelly McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profound. The most compelling read I have come across in several years.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the end of American Awakening, Joshua Mitchell thanks Roger Kimball and Encounter Books for publishing the book, which had been repeatedly rejected by university publishing houses. There is in this tale a glimpse into the state of the American educational system, which in a year of madness had, and passed on, the chance to publish a call for sanity, and one of the most philosophically and theologically perceptive books in recent memory. Something of an updated The Quest for Community written with the indignant passion of Ideas Have Consequences, American Awakening, through insights gleaned significantly from the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, offers a trenchant analysis of "identity politics and other afflictions of our time."

But this is no mere work of politics. Mitchell understands that the political and social "afflictions of our time," at root, reflect deeper problems within our society, what Russell Kirk called an "inner ravaging sickness." He views these issues, then, not as problems with political causes and solutions, but as social and even religious pathologies that impede the kind of social interactions that create healthy societies and stable governments. The first step towards addressing these pathologies is correctly diagnosing them.

Mitchell breaks the book into three sections: one dealing with identity politics, one with what he calls "bipolarity and addiction," and one to the path out of our current malaise. In the first section, Mitchell argues that identity politics is a fundamentally a perversion of the Christian concepts of transgression and innocence. In the Christian and Jewish view, the sins of a people are covered by a sacrificial scapegoat (the scapegoat, in Christianity, being Christ) who bears the burden of the people's transgressions so they can live as innocents. But in identity politics the scapegoat is changed from the perfect Lamb of God to a scapegoated group, namely white, heterosexual men. This group scapegoating means that the members of other groups, and perhaps the members of the scapegoated group who join in the scapegoating rituals, can presume their own innocence, irrespective of their actual actions, histories, or lack of group cohesiveness. The biblical doctrine of fallen humanity and the universal curse of sin has no room in this view. "Identity politics declares that there is no original sin," Mitchell writes, "only an original sinner."

But there are problems with using Christian categories apart from Christian theology. "God is nowhere to be found in the identity-politics accounting scheme," writes Mitchell, by which he means the score that the holders of such politics keep of the sins committed by certain people or groups against other people or groups. "Once Christian hope anticipated that the ledger books would be balanced at the end of time, and in the interim we were charged to forgive one another, no matter what we have endured. Christian hope having been ruled out...identity politics demands that the ledger books be balanced immediately."

Also absent in identity politics is forgiveness, "which would erase the score altogether, and leave us with no scores to settle." This lack of both hope for future justice and the grace to forgive in the here and now creates problems for society, about which more momentarily, but there is also a danger posed by identity politics to Christian belief and its broader implications. "Christian radical equality," Mitchell writes, "is, through its identity politics stepchild, currently being supplanted by a strange sort of antiegalitarian spiritual eugenics, according to which the pure and innocent groups must ascend and the stained transgressor groups must be purged."

Moreover, the internal logic of identity politics is flawed. Once it is accepted, for instance, that groups within society must bear the blame for its evils, society is set on a path of increasing division of ever smaller and more specific victimhood identities, a truth the doctrine of intersectionality bears out. Because of this, the cathartic rage directed against white, heterosexual men today will be directed at other groups tomorrow. Indeed, the cathartic rage directed at white, heterosexual men today are directed at the members of other groups today if they don't toe the line drawn for them by social justice ideologues.  "Identity politics purports to liberate entire groups," Mitchell writes. "The truth is that it advances only a numerical minority of the group members it claims to defend, and only as long as they wave its banner. Whether white, black American, woman, Hispanic, or otherwise, your voice will be heard only if you confess the creed of transgression and innocence. Oppose or dare to doubt it, and through the mystery of social transubstantiation you will suddenly be the scapegoat that the innocents need to hold together their world."

But the primary threat that identity politics poses to society is the impediment it places in the way of citizens working together to address areas of common concern, what Mitchell calls "the competent politics of liberalism." The term "liberal" here is easily misunderstood, since it is often used to describe either modern Progressivism, or the proto-libertarianism called classical liberalism. But Mitchell has neither view in mind, instead envisioning a society whose citizens are free to develop the competencies needed to live and prosper together. He explains, "On this view we build from our mixed inheritance [of good and evil] toward a historical culmination we can neither wholly understand nor control. This humility about what we can know and what we can do has important...implications." He continues, "In the institutions of society, citizens develop the competence they need to fortify those societal institutions and to modify them. Our mixed inheritance past and any number of possible futures converge in the deliberations and actions of competent liberal citizens, who build a world together."

Following Tocqueville, Mitchell observes that government power is a threat to the social institutions that citizens work through and learn from, and that government action should therefore be restrained. But identity politics, too, threatens these institutions, which are said in the social justice framework to embody all the evils of the past and of the scapegoated group. Thus we see today the attacks on not only our longest-standing government institutions, but longer-entrenched institutions like the family, the church, and the local community, all of which serve to educate and civilize the citizen. Ironically, the worst effects of the breakdown of these social institutions are felt by "the least of us," including many in the very groups that identity politics purports to represent.

Identity politics is not the only threat to society, however, and Mitchell cites two other phenomena as particularly troubling: bipolarity and addition. By bipolarity, he means the paradoxical combination of management society - the idea that life can and should be planned by "experts" - and "selfie man" - the self-obsessed modern whose technology has enabled him both to access unending entertainment and believe that the world revolves around him. This combination of forces causes us to simultaneously feel "greater than kings, but less than men." Mitchell writes, "Our problem today is that citizens cannot build a world of competence together if our challenges are so big that we ourselves can do nothing about them, or if our radical freedom to be entertained as we wish requires only a glass screen in our hands, rather than, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens all around."

By addiction, Mitchell does not mean only the visible rise in drug-related problems, but the larger tendency to turn supplements into substitutes. In this way, not only narcotics but social media, online shopping, fast food, water bottles, paper money, and reliance on government programs are all addictions, as they have transitioned from supplements to components of a healthy social life to substitutes for them. Both bipolarity and addiction, then, have the same effect as identity politics (and, in fact, combine with it) to prevent the "face-to-face, local-to-national deliberation concerned with building a world together."

The impediments to the "competent politics of liberalism" identified, Mitchell closes by offering ideas on how to overcome them, stating that such a task will require "patient and unending labor." First, he advocates the revival of a strong middle class by denying the welfare statism of the left and the market absolutism of the right, both of which threaten the conditions under which individuals become citizens.

Second, he states that Americans must seek to heal what remains of the wound of slavery and segregation, not by adopting the view of social justice activists that America is uniquely and indelibly stained by sin, nor by ignoring the problematic elements of its history, but by endeavoring through friendship and patience to overcome what remains of our past sins, enlarging our society and its history to fully include those who were previously excluded. This is, of course, a laudable and commendable recommendation, though I will add parenthetically that America, despite the hysterics of many on the left, is already well down this road, and the most significant obstacles on the road to people of all races "building a world together" are placed there by the adherents of identity politics, those who hold tenaciously to old grievances, concoct new ones, and refuse to admit the possibility that relations between groups are not as bad as they say. As Wilfred Reilly in Taboo: 10 Facts You Can't Talk About and Bradley Manning and Jason Campbell in The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars have pointed out, the framework of identity politics in fact threatens to undo the progress heretofore made, to the detriment of people of all races or ethnicities.

Finally, Mitchell argues that Americans should reject military adventurism and the "neoliberal" universalism on which it is based, and instead recognize that the particular beliefs of nations, regions, and localities should hold precedence over abstract universal principles. Pluralism, or the tolerance of differences of belief and structure, is not an obstacle to be eradicated in this view, but the result of realizing that the world is neither perfect nor perfectible, nor governable by mere abstractions. Further, "It acknowledges that the existence of 'coarser elements' does not mitigate against the development of liberal competence, but rather is the occasion for its development."

These practical proposals are well-considered, and are important steps toward political and social renewal. But the first objective must be to reject the ideologies and social tendencies that prevent us from relating to each other as fellow citizens rather than as representatives of the group identities foisted upon us, and this task is more difficult than even we imagine. In 1948, Richard Weaver, observing many of the same social problems we see manifested more clearly today, wrote that "we have to inform the multitude that restoration comes at a price." Such a price, Weaver believed, "will be very hard; [it] will call for deep reformation." There is unfortunately little indication that modern Americans are yet ready to give up their trinkets, their delusions, their comforting false philosophies and do the work of reformation.

Yet, Joshua Mitchell, by exposing the social and theological rot at the root of identity politics, by articulating the errors of management society, selfie man, and substitutism, and by offering a vision of how to overcome these pathologies has done a tremendous service with American Awakening. If the price of restoration is high, so too is the cost of unheeded wisdom, and we ignore the lessons of American Awakening at our own peril.

[Mark Seeley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was powerful. It points out three cultural disorders that are threatening American society. They are: 1) identity politics, 2) the bipolarity between globalism (management society) and isolation (selfie man), and 3) addiction to supplements. The majority of the book deals with identity politics, but it is the later malady of addiction that was the most fascinating to me. Mitchell isn't talking about alcohol or drug abuse but about things that supplement our human experience but become substitutes instead; for example, Facebook and Instagram replace genuine friendship and community or the state bureaucracy swallowing up the "little platoons" of church, civic organizations, schools and neighborhoods. Addiction is the disordered state that emerges when a supplement becomes a substitute. The supplement isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm not sure I get his beef with plastic water bottles over water from the tap -- some of his addictions are far-fetched.

Joshua Mitchell's book is really a defense of classical liberalism as espoused by Alexis Tocqueville -- what he calls the "politics of competence." But there is a definite Augustinian perspective underlying his thesis. In his acknowledgments, the author laments that this writing project was proposed to several university publishing houses. I can see why it was turned down as it doesn't fit the current narrative.

[Barbara Ruuska · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book about politics and social justice that have been sweeping across America. I was skeptical at first. I was bound and determined to not like this book. My initial concern was that his arguments would be weak and lack content. However, there were many concepts that were so eye-awakening that I had to keep reading. I am glad that I was wrong and that I stayed the course and finished it.

As a Confessional Lutheran, I look at life through the three estates--family, church and society/civic. Mr. Mitchell didn't write this book completely from this point of view, but he came very close. Who is completely innocent and who are the transgressors? When we come right down to it, there is only one innocent lamb without blemish or spot. The rest of us are sinners in need of a Savior.

Please read the detailed commentaries from other readers and learn a lot more from reading their reviews.

I don't think I'm quite ready for an apologetics commentary spar with someone screaming about social justice. I do believe that I have a better understanding of where they are coming from and with the help of the Holy Spirit maybe I'll say the right thing to lovingly dispute them.

[KyleFromDuPage · Rating 5 out of 5]

1) What star rating (out of 5) would you give this book?
5

2) What did you like about the book?
The entire book is spot on of the never ending "Supplements for substitutes." For the Left, the innocent of today is the transgressor of tomorrow. The ideology is a circular firing squad.

3) What did you dislike about the book?
Nothing

4) Would you read it again?
I don't think I would need to, but I would recommend it to anyone.

5) Who is the intended audience of the book?
People who are interested in where we are as a nation, how we have fallen, and what is in store for the future.

6) What could have been improved?
Nothing

7) What did you learn from reading this?
I am not sure I took anything vastly new away from it, other than more articulate ways to discuss ideas. However, I read a lot, so someone else may take more away.

8) What did you think of the book’s length?
It was fitting for everything it covered.

9) What's another book this one reminds you of?
Of my recent reads, "LOSERTHINK" and "A New Textbook of Americanism."

10) What other books by this author have you read?
None

[Joel Wentz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this analysis of the current state of American culture, even if it went in some directions I wasn't expecting. In general, I found Mitchell's "lens" extremely helpful, and the way he brings religious/spiritual categories to bear on current trends is illuminating. He is also an astute reader and interpreter of many important sources, including Nietzsche, Plato, and scripture.

Some of his ideas are initially curious (like his diagnosis of "bipolarity," for example) but he argues his case in a compelling and persuasive way. His discussion of "supplements" and "substitutes" as a dynamic leading to "addiction" is powerful, and one that I hadn't previously considered in this way. This book contains plenty of insights, and is absolutely worth reading. Those who are not interested, or do not respect, Christian scripture will possibly be turned off by his extensive use of it, but I highly encourage anyone to read the whole argument, regardless of personal faith commitments. Mitchell is an important voice.

[Bill Ver Velde · Rating 3 out of 5]

The good: Identity politics is the new religion of America. In Christianity all are born sinful and God, by sending His Son Jesus, expiates sin from those who believe. Conversely, in identity politics there is no expiation from original sin, there are only oppressed and oppressors.

The bad: The book is too broad often veering into other interesting territory. But it cannot address this new territory adequately. Ultimately these forays into other areas detract from the main premise of the religious nature of identity politics. A second edition should stick more rigidly to the thesis - identity politics is the new religion of America.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

According to the author we have lost the connoisseurship of buying at the local best buy in favour of the shortcut of buying on Amazon. His literal words. And that is why America is collapsing.

The book is the other side of lunacy from the book I read recently: Fatal Invention. I don't believe in the horseshoe theory of politics. These are very different kinds of Lunacy.

[Justin Dillehay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a phenomenal book. The bulk of the book critiques identity politics in an insightful way. But the best part in my judgment is the lengthy section on turning supplements into substitutes (147-186). Every pastor and parent would do well to read it.

[Brandon Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good. I wasn't completely sold on the sections about the military and technology (even though good points were made) but otherwise a solid in depth survey of politics and the troubles we are facing as a society.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

My wife had prof Mitchell in undergrad at Georgetown. This was an amazing book. His writing is so potent I had to listen to it slower than 1x speed to process what what being said. His thoughts on selfieman and substitutism were particularly interesting

[Ajrankin3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The central thesis and argument of the book is profound and well-done. Some of the examples that he gave of supplements becoming addictive were debatable and perhaps overreaching.

[Jacob Harres · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for a deeper understanding of the post war concensus, identity politics, how we got here and the cumulative effect on American culture and society. I consider this a must read book.

[Siraaj Khandkar]

Stumbled on this recently. It says good things that I largely agree with, but the presentation just wasn't for me, so I had to put it down after a couple of chapters.

[Jack Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bleh

[Jason Poling · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I've read this year. If we all could absorb this message, there may yet be hope for America.

[Ilan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The ‘Church of Woke’ will eventually eat itself…

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profound. The most compelling read I have come across in several years.