PLACEBOCRACY AND OTHER AILMENTS

A classical liberal offers a wide-ranging discussion of American political and social ills.

As a Renaissance man who worked in construction, firefighting, oil-spill cleanup, and the commercial maritime industry before becoming a lawyer, Hartwig is drawn to the multifaceted lives and intellectual curiosity of Thomas Jefferson and the other men who founded the United States. As a classical liberal, the author is also deeply sympathetic to their philosophy of limited government. Rather than signaling a new age of American politics, he sees the election of Donald Trump as president reflecting how far the U.S. has departed from its classical liberal moorings to became a “Placebocracy,” in which the government “devises solutions that appear to solve the problems of its constituents, while actually making things worse.” Because of Hartwig’s atypical ideological roots, readers across the political spectrum are likely to, at various intervals, nod in agreement at his hot, forceful views or want to toss his book aside. Like many on the left, the author places the declining incomes of middle-class Americans, corporate subsides, and preferential tax treatment for the rich at the center of the nation’s decline and rails against “short sighted” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, religious fundamentalism, and “corporate monoliths.” Alternately, he joins many on the right in his occasional screeds against Hollywood celebrities, the “pop science” of climate change, and the “political correctness” that polices “any banter whatsoever involving ethnicity, culture, gender…or the myriad of other topics that used to be considered benign.” He is most passionate in his intriguing critiques of the American educational system, which is not only another example of an inept government at work, but has become “infected” with “political correctness” and “partisan politics” as well. In his comprehensive book, Hartwig presents eloquent and consistent arguments that eschew right or left paradigms, offering many rich details. But, given the author’s self-professed predilections toward history, many scholars will bristle at some of his superficial interpretations. Jefferson would be shocked, for instance, to read that his Federalist rival John Adams—the man he called a “monarch” and who signed the big-government, anti–free speech Sedition Act—was a man committed to forestalling the “excesses of the state.”

A heavy-handed yet ideologically coherent take on contemporary politics.