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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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The
Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Democracy As
a matching bookend to Barry Goldwater’s 1964 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, economist and New York Times op-ed columnist Paul
Krugman offers his new book: The
Conscience of a Liberal. In a conversational writing style, Krugman
examines the last hundred years, and calls attention to what seems to have
worked and what has not. His prescription is for greater economic equality
that will come to a great extent by increases taxes to the wealthy. Here’s an
excerpt, , from
the beginning of Chapter 13, pp. 265-7: One
of the seeming paradoxes of America in the early twenty-first century is that
those of us who call ourselves liberal are, in an important sense,
conservative, while those who call themselves conservative are for the most
part deeply radical. Liberals want to restore the middle-class society I grew
up in; those who call themselves conservative want to take us back to the
Gilded Age, undoing a century of history. Liberals defend longstanding
institutions like Social Security and Medicare; those who call themselves
conservative want to privatize or undermine those institutions. Liberals want
to honor our democratic principles and the rule of law; those who call
themselves conservative want the president to have dictatorial powers and
have applauded the Bush administration as it imprisons people without charges
and subjects them to torture. The key to understanding this
paradox is the history I described in this book. As early as 1952—and, it turned
out, somewhat prematurely—Adlai Stevenson declared that The strange alchemy of time has somehow
converted the Democrats into the truly conservative party in the country—the
party dedicated to conserving all that is best and building solidly and
safely on these foundations. The Republicans, by contrast, are behaving like
the radical party—the party of the reckless and embittered, bent on
dismantling institutions which have been built solidly into our social
fabric. What
he meant was that the Democrats had become the defenders of Social Security,
unemployment insurance, a strong union movement—the New Deal institutions,
which created and
sustained a middle-class society—while the Republicans were trying to tear those
institutions down. Stevenson's
characterization of the Republicans was off by a few years. In the years that followed his speech
Eisenhower's "modern"
Republicans took control of their party away from the old guard that was
still fighting the New Deal, and for the next two decades the GOP was mostly
led by men who accepted the New Deal's achievements. With the rise of
movement conservatism, however, the assault on those achievements resumed.
The great domestic policy struggles of the last fifteen years—Newt Gingrich's
attempt to strangle Medicare, George W. Bush's attempt to privatize Social
Security—were exactly what Stevenson described: the party of the reckless
and embittered trying to dismantle institutions that are essential parts of
modern America's social fabric. And the struggle has been about
preserving our democracy as well as our social fabric. The New Deal did more
than create a middle-class society. It also brought America closer to its democratic ideals, by giving
working Americans real political power and ending the dominant position of
the wealthy elite. True, the New Deal relied on an alliance of convenience
with Southern segregationists—but in the end, inevitably, the New Deal ethos
turned the Democrats into the party of civil rights and political rights. The
Social Security Act of 1935 led, by a natural progression, to the Voting
Rights Act thirty years later. Liberalism, in other words, isn't just about
the welfare state: It's also about democracy and the rule of law. And those
who call themselves conservative are on the other side, with a political
strategy that rests, at its core, on exploiting the unwillingness of some
Americans to grant equal rights to their fellow citizens—to those who don't
share their skin color, don't share their faith, don't share their sexual
preferences. As I've documented in this
book, movement conservatism has been antidemocratic, with an attraction to
authoritarianism, from the beginning, when the National
Review praised
Francisco Franco and defended the right of white Southerners to
disenfranchise blacks. That antidemocratic, authoritarian attitude has never
gone away. When liberals and conservatives clash over voter rights in America
today, liberals are always trying to enfranchise citizens, while
conservatives are always trying to block some citizens from voting. When they
clash over government prerogatives, liberals are always the defenders of due
process, while conservatives insist that those in power have the right to do
as they please. After 9/11 the Bush administration tried to foster a deeply
un-American political climate in which any criticism of the president was
considered unpatriotic—and with few exceptions, American conservatives
cheered. I believe in a relatively equal
society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty.
I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a
liberal, and I'm proud of it. Krugman
calls for a new New Deal in The Conscience
of a Liberal. His argument, as shown in this excerpt is that a new New
Deal will bring America closer to our democratic ideals. This book adds
perspective to the debate over what we mean by American democracy, and what
is should be like for every citizen living in America. Steve
Hopkins, November 20, 2007 |
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Go to Executive Times Archives |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the December 2007 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The Conscience of a Liberal.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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