Overview

If there's one thing most Americans can agree on, it's that everyone hates white liberals. Conservatives hate them for being culturally tolerant and threatening to usher in communism. Libertarians hate them for believing in the power of the state. Socialists hate them for serving as capitalism's beard. Even liberals hate liberals--either because they can't manage to overcome their own prejudices, or precisely because they're so self-hating. This is the starting point for Kevin M. Schultz's lively new history of white liberals in the United States. He efficiently lays out the array of objections to liberals--ineffective, spineless, judgmental, authoritarian, and more--in a historical frame that shows how protean the concept has been throughout the past hundred years. It turns out, he declares, that how you define a ""white liberal"" is less a reflection of reality and more a Rorschach test revealing your own anxieties. Sharply assessing how decades of attacks on liberals and liberalism have steadily hollowed out the center of American political life, Schultz also explains precisely what needs to be done to avoid digging ourselves even further into the hole of polarization. The ultimate goal, he argues, is to achieve political fragmentation that will fuel the rise of a true multiparty system, where ideology will matter more, not less.

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Kevin M. Schultz is professor and chair of history at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He is the author of Buckley and Mailer and Tri-Faith America. Adam Barr, a recovering lawyer, former golf industry executive, former singing telegram messenger, and former print and television reporter, now bends the energy of all those ""formers"" toward his passion for acting and singing. He enjoys reading, rowing, baseball, music, cooking, wine, and cooking with wine while music is playing. He lives near New York City with his family.

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