The Once and Future Liberal After Identity Politics

Mark Lilla

eBook - 2017

"Terrific . . . essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we arrived in the Trump era and where the Democrats go from here." —Fareed Zakaria, CNNFollowing the shocking results of the US election of 2016, public intellectuals across the globe offered theories and explanations, but few were met with such vitriol, panic, and debate as Mark Lilla's. The Once and Future Liberal is a passionate plea to liberals to turn from the divisive politics of identity and develop a vision of the future that can persuade all citizens that they share a common destiny.Driven by a sincere desire to protect society's most vulnerable, the left has unwittingly balkanized the electorate, encouraged self-absorption rather than so...lidarity, and invested its energies in social movements rather than party politics. Identity-focused individualism has insidiously conspired with amoral economic individualism to shape an electorate with little sense of a shared future and... more