Book #20: The Once and Future Liberal

My goal in 2018 is to read 52 books. Here is a list of all the books I’ve read so far this year. Each book is ranked on a 5-star scale (5 is best).

*** The Once and Future Liberal

This is one of the rare books that I saw in a bookstore (in one of the rare times I have been in a bookstore over the last decade) that I just grabbed and decided to read. I definitely consider myself a liberal and I need to know what the heck is going on…

First off, this book is a lot smarter than me. A lot. But what I could understand of it did make an impact. I won’t spoil the surprise, but basically the Democratic party since maybe the late ’60s (right around when my guy Bobby was taken from us) and its been a slow, downward spiral ever since. And the other guys have been doing much better during that period.

So I think its a worthwhile book if you’re into such things, but hopefully you have a better education than me (or is it “I”? See, that education thing again…) so you’ll understand more of it than I did :)

Amazon’s description:

From one of the country’s most admired political thinkers, an urgent wake-up call to American liberals to turn from the divisive politics of identity and develop a vision of our future that can persuade all citizens that they share a common destiny.

In The Once and Future Liberal, Mark Lilla offers an impassioned, tough-minded, and stinging look at the failure of American liberalism over the past two generations. Although there have been Democrats in the White House, and some notable policy achievements, for nearly 40 years the vision that Ronald Reagan offered—small government, lower taxes, and self-reliant individualism—has remained the country’s dominant political ideology. And the Democratic Party has offered no convincing competing vision in response.

Reasons why you might enjoy this book:

• You consider yourself a liberal or Democrat (or close to it) and are wondering, how the f&*% did this happen???
• And you’re also wondering, how the f**$ are we going to get out of this mess?