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Cargando... Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?por Thomas Frank
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. This is my 2nd Thomas Frank book and I'm just as blown away that it's equally enjoyable as the 1st of his I read, "The People, No." I sometimes make notations or mark pages that really stand out and interest me but it's hard with both of his books that I've read because I find myself wanting to highlight almost every single word, to where it becomes pointless since most everything in the entire book is marked for me to come back to. Easy to read and T. Frank is such a good writer and story teller. 5 stars!!! This is my 2nd Thomas Frank book and I'm just as blown away that it's equally enjoyable as the 1st of his I read, "The People, No." I sometimes make notations or mark pages that really stand out and interest me but it's hard with both of his books that I've read because I find myself wanting to highlight almost every single word, to where it becomes pointless since most everything in the entire book is marked for me to come back to. Easy to read and T. Frank is such a good writer and story teller. 5 stars!!! Whether one agrees with liberalism and progressivism or not, there's little doubt that the Democratic Party of the last few decades has failed to deliver either. Frank pulls no punches in this searing indictment of the party and how it has gone from being the party of the people to desperately distancing itself from the New Deal and simultaneously courting various minority groups--blacks, gays, etc.--while enacting policies that frequently wrought disaster upon them (e.g., Clinton's welfare reform), to say nothing of the people as a while (say, the repeal of Dodd-Frank).
Behind all of this nasty fun is a serious political critique. Echoing the historian Lily Geismer, Frank argues that the Democratic Party — once “the Party of the People” — now caters to the interests of a “professional-managerial class” consisting of lawyers, doctors, professors, scientists, programmers, even investment bankers. These affluent city dwellers and suburbanites believe firmly in meritocracy and individual opportunity, but shun the kind of social policies that once gave a real leg up to the working class. In the book, Frank points to the Democrats’ neglect of organized labor and support for Nafta as examples of this sensibility, in which “you get what you deserve, and what you deserve is defined by how you did in school.” [...] Current approaches aren’t working — and unless something dramatic happens, Americans are heading for a society in which a tiny elite controls most of the wealth, resources and decision-making power.
"It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming. With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, Frank lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years. A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality. In this critical election year, Frank recalls the Democrats to their historic goals-the only way to reverse the ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor in America"-- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Like Mencken, Mr. Frank is a superb stylist. I just wish he--and the rest of the world--would refrain from using the noun "reference" as a verb.