Death of the Liberal Class
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges makes a forceful case that liberal institutions have failed Americans by ceding power to self-serving and elitist corporations
“Uncompromising. . . . Hedges indicts the press, the Church, the arts, labor unions, universities, and the Democratic Party for failing to protect the middle and lower classes.” —The New Yorker
History has shown time and time again that when the liberal class ceases to function, as happened in Tsarist Russia, Weimar Germany, and the former Yugoslavia, it opens a Pandora’s box of evils that infect the remnants of a civil society. In this devastating critique, Pulitzer Prize–winner Chris Hedges chronicles the gradual corruption and death of the liberal class, which no longer provides an institutional check to mitigate corporate control of politics, education, labor, the arts, religious institutions, and financial systems.
Although the liberal class was always compromised by its embrace of the power elite, as well as its deep hostility to American radicals, it nevertheless provided a mechanism to make incremental reform possible. But with the rise of the corporate state, it has been rendered impotent by its embrace of unfettered capitalism, the national security state, globalization, and staggering income inequalities. Consequently, the anger among the working and the middle class is, without a functioning liberal class, being expressed in ideologies that detest democratic institutions and the civilities of a liberal democracy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this tsunami of terrifying revelations, juxtaposed truths, and demonstrated facts, Hedges (War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning) argues that the traditional beacons of the liberal class the universities, media, church, labor unions, and arts have sacrificed themselves completely to the dominance of corporate greed and unbounded capitalism. We are all to blame and everything moral about our democracy stands to be lost is indeed already vanishing, in Hedges's view and those who draw attention to it are banished and booed. While every page erupts with calamities of the human spirit worthy of their own irate broadcasts and bull-horned fury, Hedges is at his best when he unpacks the density of his polemic and embraces the power of his narrative. Regardless of form, however, his most interesting theses include the parallel between the current domestic climate and the fall of Weimar Germany and the conclusion that "Everything formed by violence is senseless and useless. It exists without a future. It leaves behind nothing but death, grief, and destruction." These insights come not just as warning, but as witness.
