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    The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics
    The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics
    The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics
    Audiobook2 hours

    The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics

    Written by Mark Lilla

    Narrated by Charles Constant

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    From one of the most internationally admired political thinkers, a controversial polemic on the failures of identity politics and what comes next for the left — in America and beyond.

    Following the shocking results of the US election of 2016, public intellectuals across the globe offered theories and explanations, but few were met with such vitriol, panic, and debate as Mark Lilla’s. The Once and Future Liberal is a passionate plea to liberals to turn from the divisive politics of identity and develop a vision of the future that can persuade all citizens that they share a common destiny.

    Driven by a sincere desire to protect society’s most vulnerable, the left has unwittingly balkanized the electorate, encouraged self-absorption rather than solidarity, and invested its energies in social movements rather than party politics. Identity-focused individualism has insidiously conspired with amoral economic individualism to shape an electorate with little sense of a shared future and near-contempt for the idea of the common good.

    Now is the time to re-build a sense of common feeling and purpose, and a sense of duty to one another. A fiercely argued, important book, enlivened by acerbic wit and erudition, The Once and Future Liberal is essential listening for our times.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateAug 29, 2017
    ISBN9780062843357
    Author

    Mark Lilla

    Mark Lilla is Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and a prizewinning essayist for the New York Review of Books and other publications worldwide. His books include The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction; The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West; and The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for The Once and Future Liberal

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      Some good indictments of identity politics and some good historical context, but overall not a great argument. Ends up falling into the conservative trap of blaming teachers for something much bigger than them (which earlier parts of the argument seem to acknowledge). Also contradictory is the appeal to going back to an earlier model of civics education (I’m not sure specifically what he means. Does he think schools don’t teach civics?) whereas he earlier recognized that we cannot go backwards, politically. A better treatment of Identity Politics is elaborated by Chantel Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau. This text is ultimately an argument in favor of a liberal ideology, which, while I can’t fully disagree with, ultimately ends up feeling like “old man yells at a cloud”.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I really like this book, and think I broadly agree with Lilla, but I wish he had included a section on, you know, suggestions. He says liberals need to win more elections - great, but how? Is he saying that, if only 40% of the electorate care about racism, we should stop caring so as to capture the other 60%? Is he saying that, if we can't win by saying the system has problems, we should just pretend it doesn't have problems to get into office?

      Anyhow, a lot to like, and an important argument. Whether or not one agrees with it.
    • 4/5
      A short and to the point critique of identity politics. Discusses the recent history of liberal politics and offers quite a convincing argument why identity politics is unlikely to win elections. Identity politics creates fractious tribes, which usually do not offer a common shared vision. Suggests a liberal commitment to solidarity and citizenship instead.
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this book. I agree 100% with its thesis: that solidarity is the core liberal value missing in the US on both the Right (libertarianism) and Left (identity politics). And certainly I am hoping for a sane Left to re-emerge not just in the US but in all world democracies where the Left is in retreat. But while arguing forcefully that politics is not a morality play, the author basically falls into the trap he claims needs to be avoided. He repeatedly labels Republicans as evil, Trump voters as misguided & immoral fools, Trump as the anti-Christ. I’m obviously exaggerating, but only a bit. Liberalism is a child of the Enlightenment, and the core value on which that was based is skepticism. Lila lacks skepticism regarding his own political values and beliefs. He lives with the religious fervor that the Democrats are the only true democrats. It’s totally fair to disagree with conservatives and Republicans, and Trump and his voters. But labeling them all as evil and unprincipled while claiming you believe in solidarity, makes you a preachy hypocrite.
    • 4/5
      This is a hard book to rate. I resist giving it three stars even though four seems like it might be too many.

      This is a super-brief political-social history of the "how we got to here," starting roughly in 1960, but with references to the 40's and 50's, the 1770's, etc. combined with an indictment of Identity Politics in general, but most specifically those of the modern "identity liberal." Then a short section of "we can't just rehash Rooseveltian liberalism" but "we need to make common purpose and citizenship the core of our discourse and liberal platform(s)," without any real specifics beyond that.

      I'm sick and tired of identity politics, of politics as the personal, of politics as religion; of the reduction of all and everything to power and nothing more; of much or even all that Lilla is sick and tired (and angry and worried) about. But... I wonder if he gives identity liberalism and its practitioners/proponents too short shrift? He nods in the direction -multiple times- of there being real issues of racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ, etc. But he fails to connect those nods to what he is criticizing.

      Much as we need to understand the real issues that are driving "Trump voters" are not all/only about racism, xenophobia, and general revanchism, that there are issues of equality, poverty, criminal justice, "vision" and the like that are completely open to "liberal" solutions, we also need to understand the issues that, to take an example Lilla calls out, BLM are driving forward and/or fueled by. Lilla fails to do that.

      But maybe that isn't his role. He's in his sixties, after all, and "social justice warriors" are, broadly speaking, somewhere between their teens and their 30's. Maybe people from that "generation" (edges of X, Y, and Z) need to step up. I think that is happening, at least in some amount. I dunno, we'll see...

      In any case, 3.5 stars for part of an important critique and not-quite counterproposal.