An optimistic prophecy that a saner, more equitable politics will take the place of whatever it is we have now.
The founder of the Young Turks presents a hopeful thesis that present polarization will resolve itself in a left-leaning democracy.
The Republican Party comes in for heavy shellacking throughout Uygur’s pages. The people who voted for Trump, by that account, didn’t vote for him based on policy issues or a reasoned platform. “They wanted racism, cruelty, and authoritarianism,” writes the author. They certainly got that and more. Yet, Uygur insists, that party is in power despite the fact that it consistently loses the popular vote. Most Americans “are just not fundamentally conservative”; they are opposed to social injustice and the authoritarian suppression of civil rights and the right to choose, wholly in favor of the social safety net provided by government programs. Race, greed, and religion on the one hand, social equity on the other: It’s small wonder, Uygur writes, that young voters are so overwhelmingly left-leaning, to the extent that 60% polled on the matter believed socialism to be more humane than capitalism, and that the Republican Party is therefore doing all it can to disenfranchise them. For all their efforts, writes the author, extreme right-wing politicians will not succeed in passing any spectacularly awful laws, such as making Trump president for life or stripping civil rights away from the LGBTQ+ community, despite a certain amount of fearmongering among progressives that they’re plotting to do just such things. (“It’s so easy to scare Democratic voters.”) That’s not to say they won’t try, though Uygur remains firm in his view that progressives will win in the end because they will somehow convince “our conservative brothers and sisters” that progressives love them—and “when you give out love, it doesn’t make you smaller, it makes you larger.” Magical thinking? Perhaps, but it’s a nice thought.
An optimistic prophecy that a saner, more equitable politics will take the place of whatever it is we have now.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250272799
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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