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War on the American Republic: How Liberalism Became Despotism
Each of the three movements rejected older republican principles of governance in favor of an administrative state, but there were substantial differences between Teddy Roosevelt’s Anglo-Protestant progressive social gospelers, who battled trusts and curbed immigration; Franklin Roosevelt’s and Lyndon Johnson’s secular liberals, who forged a government-business partnership and promoted a civil rights agenda; and the 1960s radicals, who protested corporate influence in the Great Society, liberal hypocrisy on race and gender, and the war in Vietnam. Each sought to overturn what came before. Following the revolution of the 1960s, elites on both left and right turned against the industrial middle class to erect an oligarchy at home and advance globalization abroad. Each side claimed to serve the interests of disadvantaged or underrepresented groups. Radicals ensconced themselves in bureaucracy and academia to advance their vision of social justice for women and minorities, while neoliberal elites promoted monopoly finance, open borders, and the outsourcing of jobs to benefit consumers. The administrative state became a global American empire, but the neoliberals’ economic and military failures precipitated a crisis of legitimacy. In the “great awokening” that began under Barack Obama, neoliberal elites, including establishment conservatives, openly broke with the populist base of the Republican Party, embraced identity politics, and used COVID-19 and a myth of insurrection to strip away the rights of American citizens. Today, an incompetent kleptocracy is draining the wealthiest and most powerful people in history, thus eroding the foundations of its own empire.
456 pages, Hardcover
Published March 21, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 16, 2023
Outstanding! Not only have I read this book, but it's one of the books that will read again, again and again. A great book to read to renew the minds of the sane vs the insanity that permeates our society and country today.
March 4, 2025
Mixed feelings about this book. The content is good even if I don't agree with is view all the time. But the writing is just so bad. The guy is smart and has an encyclopedic brain but he just lists objective facts like a machine gun, but without the rhythm. His writing is very disjointed and abrupt. The sentences are often stacked on top of each other with no mortar connecting them.
But I really liked how he destroyed several of my presuppositions. One was already being destroyed but he finished it off. I was begging to understand that many of the myths we tell ourselves about ww2 were not as true as we believed. He talks about how we caused the war by jumping into the first one just because we wanted global power. And then how we tortured and killed German prisoners and used them for experiments. We also starved 40-50k prisoners to death in concentration camps. We also redefined how we fought wars by calling our enemies enemies of humanity thus justifying killing civilians in mass because they were just as much our enemy as the state and it's soldiers we were fighting.
The second one he destroyed was Bishop Barron who I had always liked. But during covid and BLM it looks like he supported BLM. And a google search confirms this. He agrees that America is systemically racist and that we have a unconscious race problem. Maybe he has changed his view but even if he did this is like a political philosopher studying Fascism for 30 years and going to Ukraine and digging their form of government and state oppression.
Another was I was a big fan of Milton Friedman and his free market and free trade ideas. As I become aware of the evils of globalization though I was becoming skeptical. But to learn that Rawls and Friedman were the intellectual founders of Neo-Liberalism I was shocked. And he says we used free trade to undermine other nations sovereignty. I would add free speech to that too.
The point of the book though is to show how things were and how they changed to what I would call totalitarianism but he avoids the term. The first period he calls Republican citizenship which ran from the founding to the 1880s. Civic engagement was 70-90% (since then it's 50-60%). Parties where very involved in peoples lives. There was a lot of graft but it was much more democratic then today. Parties would send people to voters houses for funerals or birthdays and big events. When the party won they would distribute jobs. They would also give people gifts and help them. So you would obviously be very involved with everything.
Another one was Regan was a failure as president. His no fault divorce destroyed the family. He ballooned the deficit by increased spending on the military while giving tax cuts to the rich. His immigration policy decreased wages and opened the borders and his free trade relying on Milton Friedman led to us deindustrializing.
Then from 1880 to 1920 the progressives came along. He said it originated in a spiritual crisis and translated religious fervor into social reform. Which really fits Nietzsche's death of god proclamation and bodes very ill that the American religion was falling apart way back then. Heavily impacted by Hegel and Darwin and the "science" of bureaucracy. Focused on uplift. Proud of the Anglo Saxon race. Basketball was the first a priori scientific sport for health and morals. The state was to care for souls in a way that formerly churches did (totalitarianism much?). The divorce rate in 1880 was 1 in 21 and it increased to 1 in 12 in 1900. The state would have no limits. Bureaucrats would start making decisions instead of elected politicians. Property tax's were used to make people use their land productively and income taxes were created to compensate for a decrease in tariffs. "Progressivism properly refers to implementation of administrative rule that resulted in regime change." Empire was justified as just waged on behalf of foreigners and for their own good. Such blatant arrogance. By 1902 we killed 250,000 Filipinos.
Liberalism came after and was the first fully secular movement where science replaced religion. Dewey played a big part. Liberals claimed culture did not matter and that all humans were alike. Social institutions were not a means of obtaining something for individuals but a way to create individuals. Lippmann argued that elites must use propaganda to manufacture consent. Noam Chomsky has been right a very long time! James Landis was hired to create the administrative state. After the war we starved at least 2 million German civilians. He says how ww2 created a new sacred order meaning a new mythology. The government hired academics to justify the war and silence anti interventionists. Judeo Christian was created to oppose Soviet Communism. LBJ said: "Our foreign policy must always be an extension of our domestic policy".
Radicalism began in the 90s. Horkheimer and Adorno said Liberalism turned the world into a laboratory where they tried to control people at tyrants bidding. Very accurate and 60 years before covid! Conservatives should spend less time laughing at their opponents and try listening to them! Wilhelm Reich said morality is oppression and the family leads to fascism. Duel moralities arose for the elites and release of the id for the masses. Suburbanites lost all traditions and social connections leaving them atomized and willing subjects for authoritarianism. Started identity politics. Used immigration to drive down wages for big business. Feminism was just a class war between women who worked and normal stay at home women.
Neo Liberalism led the way to deindustrialization using free trade to globalization as we outsourced our manufacturing and instead focused on finance. Elite morality began to solidify and family's became more stable but the state became more involved in families of the lower class and destroyed them. Regan shrank the middle class by 20%.
Then he talks about Identity politics and the emergence of Despotism as the wealthy Neo Liberal elites join with identity politics under Obama in 2012 with the relationship cementing in 2016 in opposition to Trumps anti globalism. Since the Progressive movement the state had gotten increasingly intertangled with business. While the purpose used to be more anti trust and against the monopolies, under Neo Liberalism the state began to support the monopolies as long as they were more efficient. Under Liberalism State Capitalism was more production oriented but under Neo Liberalism this was all destroyed.
When Neo Liberalism joined with identity politics you can see how state controlled monopolies could be wielded with great power to advance the cause of identity politics. And now everything is just crap. Science is not a process but corrupt and incompetent institutions. Our food is crap. Everything everywhere is just crap and often evil.
At the end of the book he tries to advance the New Right which I feel uneasy about although sympathize with in many ways.
He also points out that if their really was racism and favoritism for white people then minorities would be trying to identify as white instead of falling over themselves to be oppressed in some manor. I thought was a good and obvious point.
But I really liked how he destroyed several of my presuppositions. One was already being destroyed but he finished it off. I was begging to understand that many of the myths we tell ourselves about ww2 were not as true as we believed. He talks about how we caused the war by jumping into the first one just because we wanted global power. And then how we tortured and killed German prisoners and used them for experiments. We also starved 40-50k prisoners to death in concentration camps. We also redefined how we fought wars by calling our enemies enemies of humanity thus justifying killing civilians in mass because they were just as much our enemy as the state and it's soldiers we were fighting.
The second one he destroyed was Bishop Barron who I had always liked. But during covid and BLM it looks like he supported BLM. And a google search confirms this. He agrees that America is systemically racist and that we have a unconscious race problem. Maybe he has changed his view but even if he did this is like a political philosopher studying Fascism for 30 years and going to Ukraine and digging their form of government and state oppression.
Another was I was a big fan of Milton Friedman and his free market and free trade ideas. As I become aware of the evils of globalization though I was becoming skeptical. But to learn that Rawls and Friedman were the intellectual founders of Neo-Liberalism I was shocked. And he says we used free trade to undermine other nations sovereignty. I would add free speech to that too.
The point of the book though is to show how things were and how they changed to what I would call totalitarianism but he avoids the term. The first period he calls Republican citizenship which ran from the founding to the 1880s. Civic engagement was 70-90% (since then it's 50-60%). Parties where very involved in peoples lives. There was a lot of graft but it was much more democratic then today. Parties would send people to voters houses for funerals or birthdays and big events. When the party won they would distribute jobs. They would also give people gifts and help them. So you would obviously be very involved with everything.
Another one was Regan was a failure as president. His no fault divorce destroyed the family. He ballooned the deficit by increased spending on the military while giving tax cuts to the rich. His immigration policy decreased wages and opened the borders and his free trade relying on Milton Friedman led to us deindustrializing.
Then from 1880 to 1920 the progressives came along. He said it originated in a spiritual crisis and translated religious fervor into social reform. Which really fits Nietzsche's death of god proclamation and bodes very ill that the American religion was falling apart way back then. Heavily impacted by Hegel and Darwin and the "science" of bureaucracy. Focused on uplift. Proud of the Anglo Saxon race. Basketball was the first a priori scientific sport for health and morals. The state was to care for souls in a way that formerly churches did (totalitarianism much?). The divorce rate in 1880 was 1 in 21 and it increased to 1 in 12 in 1900. The state would have no limits. Bureaucrats would start making decisions instead of elected politicians. Property tax's were used to make people use their land productively and income taxes were created to compensate for a decrease in tariffs. "Progressivism properly refers to implementation of administrative rule that resulted in regime change." Empire was justified as just waged on behalf of foreigners and for their own good. Such blatant arrogance. By 1902 we killed 250,000 Filipinos.
Liberalism came after and was the first fully secular movement where science replaced religion. Dewey played a big part. Liberals claimed culture did not matter and that all humans were alike. Social institutions were not a means of obtaining something for individuals but a way to create individuals. Lippmann argued that elites must use propaganda to manufacture consent. Noam Chomsky has been right a very long time! James Landis was hired to create the administrative state. After the war we starved at least 2 million German civilians. He says how ww2 created a new sacred order meaning a new mythology. The government hired academics to justify the war and silence anti interventionists. Judeo Christian was created to oppose Soviet Communism. LBJ said: "Our foreign policy must always be an extension of our domestic policy".
Radicalism began in the 90s. Horkheimer and Adorno said Liberalism turned the world into a laboratory where they tried to control people at tyrants bidding. Very accurate and 60 years before covid! Conservatives should spend less time laughing at their opponents and try listening to them! Wilhelm Reich said morality is oppression and the family leads to fascism. Duel moralities arose for the elites and release of the id for the masses. Suburbanites lost all traditions and social connections leaving them atomized and willing subjects for authoritarianism. Started identity politics. Used immigration to drive down wages for big business. Feminism was just a class war between women who worked and normal stay at home women.
Neo Liberalism led the way to deindustrialization using free trade to globalization as we outsourced our manufacturing and instead focused on finance. Elite morality began to solidify and family's became more stable but the state became more involved in families of the lower class and destroyed them. Regan shrank the middle class by 20%.
Then he talks about Identity politics and the emergence of Despotism as the wealthy Neo Liberal elites join with identity politics under Obama in 2012 with the relationship cementing in 2016 in opposition to Trumps anti globalism. Since the Progressive movement the state had gotten increasingly intertangled with business. While the purpose used to be more anti trust and against the monopolies, under Neo Liberalism the state began to support the monopolies as long as they were more efficient. Under Liberalism State Capitalism was more production oriented but under Neo Liberalism this was all destroyed.
When Neo Liberalism joined with identity politics you can see how state controlled monopolies could be wielded with great power to advance the cause of identity politics. And now everything is just crap. Science is not a process but corrupt and incompetent institutions. Our food is crap. Everything everywhere is just crap and often evil.
At the end of the book he tries to advance the New Right which I feel uneasy about although sympathize with in many ways.
He also points out that if their really was racism and favoritism for white people then minorities would be trying to identify as white instead of falling over themselves to be oppressed in some manor. I thought was a good and obvious point.
August 13, 2024
Quite an examination of the current state of American Society. It's a difficult read, as it's message is not the message you want to hear, but rather the message you need to hear.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews