Red meat for progressives, tempering its outrage with hopefulness and a plan for moving forward.
Examination of an America driven by right-wing anger and revenge.
Law professors Michaels and Noll start off with a chilling quote from right-wing political strategist Steve Bannon, who offered his podcast listeners some advice: “You just have to impose your will.” He was urging his fans to resist the inauguration of Joe Biden as president; that comment was broadcast on Jan. 5, 2021. Bannon, the authors argue, is in the vanguard of a new class of political vigilantes: ”loosely connected cadres of right-wing activists, lawyers, thugs, grifters, and plutocrats who rally around a twice impeached president and blame their problems—real and manufactured—on Democrats, minorities, foreigners, scientists, bureaucrats, and educators.” The authors trace the origins of what they call “Vigilante Democracy,” a system that recruits “citizen culture warriors” to uphold white Christian power, to right-wing media figures like Rush Limbaugh and politicians like Sarah Palin. They also discuss the right’s embrace of George Zimmerman, who gunned down an unarmed Black teenager in a gated Florida community, and Kyle Rittenhouse, who after an altercation shot and killed a protestor at a Wisconsin racial justice demonstration. Vigilante Democracy, Michaels and Noll write, “deploys lawyers, gunslingers, thugs, parent associations, snitches, podcasters, influencers, keyboard warriors, and QAnon trolls” to ban books, restrict abortion, and demonize transgender children. The remedy, the authors conclude, lies with blue states playing “constitutional hardball”; they propose a series of laws that the states could pass to combat right-wing extremism. Concerned progressives, who have been beaten down by MAGA adherents but energized by recent liberal electoral victories, will find this interesting and inspiring reading. The examples of vigilantism the authors give won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has paid much attention to American political culture, but the book does present a coherent narrative that explains the nation’s descent into violence and authoritarianism.
Red meat for progressives, tempering its outrage with hopefulness and a plan for moving forward.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781668023235
Page Count: 384
Publisher: One Signal/Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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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