![]() Yet Siegel’s liberalism is focused not on addressing postmodern concerns such as transgender rights, reinventing American democracy as primarily an instrument of racist oppression, or the need for draconian steps to address climate change and the pandemic. At a time when urban pundits have largely embraced the celebratory-even amidst the wreckage of the 2020 pandemic-Siegel has been willing to show the unmistakable factors that previously led, and are once again leading, to urban decline.Īlthough many of his current admirers are from the right, Siegel is a product of a largely social democratic urban culture, notably epitomized by his mentor, Irving Howe, and Howe’s magazine, Dissent. With his laser-like focus on reality, Fred Siegel has inspired many, including this author, and in the process has also earned many enemies. The forward to the book was written by Joel Kotkin an excerpt follows: This wide-ranging collection of essays critically recounts how passionate intellectual debates and then heated cultural struggles over how to realize "the good life" in the modern city emerged from the writings of early progressive "thought leaders." ![]() In his recently released book, The Crisis of Liberalism: Prelude to Trump, Fred Siegel leverages New York City to uncover the key political conflicts and social contradictions in American liberalism over the last century. ![]()
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