The Once and Future Liberal
After Identity Politics

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 Calvi......more

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 h......more

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......more

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 majoriti......more

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 o......more