The recent issue of Modern Age contains a commemorative essay by Susan McWilliams marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of Christopher Lasch’s The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics. McWilliams reminds readers that Lasch offers a positive analysis of populism that speaks to the current political malaise. As part of his critique of the cult of progress, Lasch attempted to ground politics in the intuitions of the petty bourgeoisie and the populist tradition that gave life to those intuitions. He saw in petty-bourgeois culture a moral realism that recognized the cost and limits of human existence, reinforcing a healthy skepticism of progress. The “small proprietors, artisans, tradesmen, and farmers” of the petty-bourgeois world were the least likely “to mistake the promised land of progress for the true and only heaven.”Continue Reading »
I don’t think we’ve fully realized how acute feelings of vulnerability have become in twenty-first-century America. At prestigious universities, young people with every reason to believe they’ll land on the top end of society nevertheless feel threatened, so much so that some call for . . . . Continue Reading »
The global system—which is committed to the free flow of labor, goods, and capital—works well for the leadership class in Europe and North America, as it does for striving workers in China, India, and elsewhere. It doesn’t work so well for the middle class in the West. Thus, in the West, the led no longer share the economic interests of their leaders. Continue Reading »
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump together are likely to end this primary season with a majority of all votes cast. Add the votes for Republican bad boy Ted Cruz, and the vote total for anti-establishment candidates may reach 60 percent. This represents a stunning repudiation of the existing political . . . . Continue Reading »
In the wake of the unexpected insurgence of Sanders and Trump, it has become commonplace to pit “populism” against the “Establishment.” Supporters praise the uprising of popular politics against the shared interests of an entrenched patrician and business elite, while party leaders and . . . . Continue Reading »
Conservative populism can't catch a break. The party's elites have a stranglehold on policy. As Reihan Salam has pointed out, most Republicans are opposed to increasing immigration, but most Republican office holders favor vastly increasing immigration when they think the voters aren't looking. Only . . . . Continue Reading »
Rod Dreher recently posted excerpts of a letter from one of his readers. It was an extended, largely negative assessment of my analysis of our political moment, “An Abandoned White Middle Class.” There I argued that the changing nature of our leadership class explains the populist rebellion, at . . . . Continue Reading »
Jeffrey Bell has been an aid to both Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, a candidate for the Senate, and fellow at a number of different institutes. He is currently president of Lehrman Bell Mueller Cannon, Inc., an economic and political forecasting firm in northern Virginia. This book, clearly based in . . . . Continue Reading »
