A trenchant critique of the Left’s economic radicalism, coupling shrewd analysis with a stinging polemic.
The hypertrophy of the federal government has brought socialism out of hibernation and turned it into a dire threat to the American economy, according to this sweeping historical study.
Distinguishing his subject from the “traditional Left” of liberals, labor unions, and other moderate leftists, Young warns of a resurgent socialist Left with Marxist roots, among whom he numbers Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other congressional Squad members, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the campus protest Left. The author focuses on their economic agenda, which, he argues, envisions the federal government taking over and nationalizing most of the economy, providing free education and health care, guaranteeing housing and jobs, and imposing confiscatory wealth taxes. The result, he contends, would be a sluggish, inefficient, moribund economy crushed by a terminally bloated government sector. Starting in the Obama administration, Young argues, this socialist Left reemerged to try to commandeer the federal government juggernaut by taking over the Democratic Party. The author presents an intricate and wide-ranging analysis of American economics and politics, one that has both interpretive breadth and a wealth of statistical detail. He’s especially good on the socio-economic miracle of colonial America, with its unprecedented levels of prosperity and equality based in self-government, and on the New Deal’s radical break with the American pattern of limited government. At times, he overstates the gap between the Sanders-AOC program and Democratic Party traditions, but he makes a vigorous case that their approach is economically and politically unsustainable because of its heavy tax and regulatory burdens. Young conveys all of this in lucid prose that packs an aphoristic punch. (“As a multiplicity of movements with at least as many voices and priorities, the socialist Left is political schizophrenia.”) Leftists and honest-to-God socialists will find much to dispute here, but Young offers a compelling conservative riposte to progressive orthodoxies.
A trenchant critique of the Left’s economic radicalism, coupling shrewd analysis with a stinging polemic.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9798891381292
Page Count: 432
Publisher: RealClear Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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