Eric Kaufmann, The Third Awokening: A 12 Point Plan for Rolling Back Progressive Extremism. New York: Post Hill Press, 2024.
Wokeness is an elusive concept. “Progressive extremism” in the subtitle captures only one major dimension. Here the term “cultural socialism” embraces the entire phenomenon and is fully explicated in the course of this book. Wokeness is currently the most consequential cultural presence in the United States as well as in other Anglosphere countries. It has captured American universities and dominates the elite media, nonprofits, and the entertainment industries. It is embedded in the Democratic Party and played a role in the 2024 presidential election. It has generated an avalanche of writings—scholarly, polemical, and popular. However, Eric Kaufmann’s Third Awokening transcends previous writings with a new and more comprehensive analysis backed by extensive public opinion data. It provides an indispensable timeline for understanding the evolution of the three “Awokenings”—the first stemming from the anti-racism taboo in the 1960s; ‘political correctness’ and the Second Awokening c. 1990; and the Third Awokening since 2015. He shows how these developments were driven above all by a transformation and embedding of social norms and taboos, as explained here.
(December 2024)
(Inequality III) Reflections on the One Percent: Causes and Consequences of Increasing Affluent Inequality
Inequality I discusses Walter Scheidel’s remarkable world history of the dynamics of inequality and implications for the present. Inequality II considers Martin Wolf’s not entirely successful analysis of those implications and possible remedies. It also includes my account of the villains of inequality—billionaires. The growth of “affluent inequality,” or the wealth of the one percent, is seemingly inexorable; but the diagnoses of the most knowledgeable analysts regard it uniformly as harmful. Hence, the need for this essay, Inequality III—my attempt to piece together a coherent and credible interpretation of this phenomenon. The first part establishes basic facts about past and present affluent inequality. The second part examines the causes driving this burgeoning of wealth. And the third considers the consequences for American society, here.
(July 2023)
(Inequality II) Martin Wolf, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, New York: Penguin, 2023.
Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, London, has for decades described and interpreted contemporary economic developments. Here he provides a summary of the major changes that have transformed the world economy since the halcyon days of Western prosperity and hegemony, but now sees a crisis of democracy emanating from a crisis of capitalism. He examines the economic forces that have undergirded and facilitated growing inequality; how inequality poses a threat to democratic government and society; and advances public policies that might arrest or mitigate ‘disequalization.’ Overall, his analyses of economic developments are sounder than his future projections. Finally, I offer a further perspective on the identity and roles of the mega-rich—the billionaires—here
(June 2023)
(Inequality I) Walter Scheidel, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton University Press, 2017.
The theme of inequality has long been embedded in American political dialogue, and The Great Leveler is a significant contribution this issue. Walter Scheidel is an extraordinary, wide-ranging historian (Rome, China, ancient demography), whose more recent book was discussed in Roger’s Notes (Nov. 2020). In The Great Leveler, he documents what might be called an iron law of inequality: namely, that ruling elites seek and obtain economic advantages that enhance their incomes and wealth, resulting in inherent growth and high levels of inequality. This process is only reversed, and pervasive leveling results, through “violent shocks” in the forms of war, revolution, plague, or systems collapse. The “Great Compression” of inequality in the 20th century, which took place from 1914 to 1980, was the result of the horrendous world wars and their ‘hangover’—a generation of steeply progressive taxation, middle-class growth, and welfare-state expansion. However, this relatively low inequality was essentially a carryover from the violent shocks of the war years (1914-1945). Since 1980, the iron law has reasserted itself in the seemingly inexorable increase in economic inequality, as explained here.
(June 2023)
Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography, New York: Knopf, 2011.
Why Jerusalem? Probably the most famous city in history, this ‘biography’ recounts the tumultuous experiences of this spiritual center over three millennia. Jerusalem has seemingly evoked intense religious feelings among the faithful of all three branches of the Abrahamic religions. Unfortunately, spiritual fervor has too often produced a zero-sum mentality, as the piety of one sect has seemed to preclude those with different beliefs, all too often violently. Hence, the secular rule of this multicultural city has passed among Christians, Muslims, and Jews in bloody confrontations. The author apparently belongs to the Montefiore family, which played a significant role in modern Jerusalem. His history shows no favoritism, but rather provides a far richer descriptive account than my Notes can convey. The coverage of Jerusalem in the state of Israel is comparatively light, but on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel (April 1948) an historical perspective helps to appreciate its enduring dilemmas here.
(May 2023)
When Blacks Were Negroes: Kent Garrett and Jeanne Ellsworth, The Last Negroes at Harvard: The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who Changed Harvard Forever. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2020.
This extended memoir chronicles author Garrett’s four years at Harvard along with his 17 black classmates. The book is a product of years spent finding, interviewing, and gathering information about these classmates and their mostly successful careers. They were a unique group in a unique setting, but their experiences portray the dawn of the civil rights era from a purely black perspective. Read about it by clicking HERE.
(January 2023)
Oligarchs, Clerisy, and California: Joel Kotkin, The Coming Crisis of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. New York: Encounter, 2020.
Joel Kotkin’s diagnosis of the ills affecting contemporary societies—the U.S. and globally—is well-informed and well-documented, and thus well worth consideration. It is also one of a large and growing number of similar lamentations, some of which are mentioned in the notes. I obviously share these concerns, or I wouldn’t bother to write about them. However, I am struck by the sheer volume of these writings, by their underlying unanimity, and by their apparent impotence to even register against the reigning hegemony of what Kotkin calls the “clerisy.” Hence, the following Notes have an underlying degree of skepticism. First, as a historian, I am well aware that contemporary interpretations, and even more so predictions based on those interpretations, are highly fallible—future developments can be radically different. Second, the phenomena that are summarized here in succinct sentences or paragraphs are complex and multidimensional; not only are there opposing narratives, but the issues deserve impartial research. And third, I suspect that more fundamental forces are shaping these phenomena. So, read and decide for yourself by clicking HERE.
(September 2022)
Burma From Bad to Worse: Thant Myint-U, The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2020.
I picked this volume off the library shelves thinking, I know very little about Burma/Myanmar. Was that ever true! The Hidden History is well worth reading to gain some understanding of this complex and obscure country. More valuable is learning that what we thought we knew from media coverage is largely wrong, and why—here.
(April 2022)
Merit and Inequality: Adrian Wooldridge, The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2021. Kathryn Paige Harden, The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality. Princeton. Princeton University Press, 2021.
I was eager to read Hardin’s explanation of the genetic basis for intelligence, which has been an interest of mine. I paired it with Wooldridge’s knowledgeable account since meritocracy bears on the applications and results of intelligence in society. Both authors excel at clarifying their respective subjects, but falter when considering what to do about the social issues that are raised. I cannot claim to do any better, but I hope to offer some understanding of cognitive ability and merit here.
(February 2022)
Ellen Schrecker, The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021.
This review was published in Quillette, an excellent online journal of independent opinion. For readers old enough to remember the 1960s, it should rekindle memories, even though it mostly concerns faculty. Ellen Schrecker is an old ‘Lefty’ and also a fine historian. Hence, a reliable depiction of events with no criticism of radical participants. I try to provide a slight corrective here.
(February 2022)
Ronald Radosh, Commies: A Journey through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001.
Roger’s Notes usually reviews current publications, but Commies is a worthwhile exception. Radosh had an interesting life as a partisan of the radical left from the 1940s to the 1980s, and his personal story provides a revealing window onto what he called the “church of the left.” When he wrote this memoir, he felt that the old faith had largely atrophied. Twenty years later, with a reconstituted Left more powerful than ever before, the lessons Radosh took from his experiences seem relevant once again, as examined here.
(August 2021)
Steven E. Koonin, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2021.
In previous Roger’s Notes (October 2020; February 2021) I reviewed four recent books on climate change. No one doubts that global warming is occurring, but only one of them—by Bill Gates—was hopeful that it could be halted. While these authors each make worthwhile contributions, Unsettled supersedes them in providing a more scientifically comprehensive description of the earth’s climate backed with abundant data. An eminent physicist, Koonin is concerned with rectifying the corruption of climate science by partisan climate warriors. However, he concludes that global warming “will continue to grow in any scenario short of ceasing all emissions,” which is “a practical impossibility.” This Note reviews his arguments and evidence, and then considers what it means to embrace impossible goals instead of adapting to reality with rational policies. Why an inevitably warmer planet will not portend the catastrophe that climate Cassandras predict is explained here.
(June 2021)
Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.
In this remarkable book, Joseph Henrich argues that culture permeates our lives and is the primary factor in determining who we are. The author is a leading expert in cultural anthropology, cultural psychology, and human evolutionary biology (his professorial title). I am out of my depths in all these fields, but nevertheless attempt in this Note to explicate his case. Cultural learning drove human evolution. Cultural adaptations like cooking food and throwing spears led, through natural selection, to genetic changes in our physiognomy. Social life similarly favored genes for the kinds of prosocial behaviors that make society possible. Henrich’s depiction of these processes are, at once, erudite and entertaining, and his ultimate message of the primacy of culture in human affairs is profound. It brought new ideas to this old brain, and perhaps it might stimulate your thinking as well.
(April 2021)
Douglas B. Downey, How Schools Really Matter: Why Our Assumption about Schools and Inequality Is Mostly Wrong. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.
Sociologist Douglas Downey wants to overturn the conventional wisdom about schooling, what he calls The Assumption that “children learn more in schools serving high-income and white children than in schools serving low-income and minority children,” and thus schools exacerbate inequality in American society. This assumption is not only prevalent across media and society, it is also taught as gospel in texts and handbooks in the sociology of education. But Downey presents compelling evidence that this view is, as he says, “mostly wrong.” Understanding why raises fundamental issues about schooling and human learning. Read about it here.
(March 2021)
Bjorn Lomborg, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. New York: Basic Books, 2020.
Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.
Daniel Yergin, The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations. New York: Penguin, 2020.
Scarcely a day goes by, it seems, without some hopeful projection or dire warning about greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. These three books provide realistic assessments of this phenomenon—informed coverage helpful for comprehending the deluge of media reporting. All three authors are extremely knowledgeable, although their outlooks are, respectively, pessimistic, optimistic, and pragmatic. My own perspective, readers might notice, is jaundiced toward wind and solar, and favorable toward nuclear energy, but otherwise completely objective (of course). Readers will find much information to form their own opinions here.
The numbers reported in this Note are taken from the respective books or online sources. Data reported in media stories often differ, which reflects the inherent uncertainty of this phenomenon.
(March 2021)
Helen Andrews, Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster.
The Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, have been blamed for everything from neoliberalism to political correctness—and the Great Recession to boot. Helen Andrews’ indictment focuses on six individuals—Steve Jobs, producer Aaron Sorkin, development economist Jeffrey Sachs, nut job Camille Paglia, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor. Her profiles are intriguing even if her argument is less than cogent, as discussed in this note.
(Feb. 2021)
Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody. Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020.
Is America a racist society? Are all whites privileged? Is sex socially constructed? If you wonder how these ideologically loaded notions have become commonplace in public discourse, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay provide a masterful explanation of how critical theory, identity politics, and other related doctrines that define the “progressive” left have infiltrated mainstream American culture. Originating in literary postmodernism, these doctrines developed by the 1980s into separate but related movements of applied postmodernism—postcolonial theory, queer theory, critical race theory, intersectionality, feminist and gender studies, and disability studies. Then, beginning around 2010, these fields morphed into dogmatic assertions of absolute truth that the authors term the “Social Justice Movement.” These doctrines are actually subversive to social justice and liberal democracy, as discussed in this Note.
(January 2021)
David John Frank and John W. Meyer, The University and the Global Knowledge Society.
Sociologists David Frank and John Meyer make the case that university-based knowledge is the foundation of the culture that now permeates developed and developing countries—the Global Knowledge Society. As culture, this ‘universalistic rationalism’ has a quasi-religious status. More tangibly, universities and university graduates have exploded in numbers over the last half century; and the organization of university knowledge into departments and degrees is nearly identical across the globe. However, the globalization and liberalization of the knowledge society diverges in many respects from social realities, and in the past decade that culture has been challenged by sympathetic critics and hostile ideologies. The authors raise these tantalizing issues, but provide little analysis. For an overview of the knowledge society and its challenges, see this Note.
(January 2021)
Joseph Henrich, The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.
Walter Scheidel, Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity.
One would never guess from the main titles that these two books address the same subject. The subtitles however hint that they both seek to explain how Western countries developed their modern forms. As Walter Scheidel rightly notes, “there is no bigger question for the historian than that of why the world has turned out the way it has … transformed beyond the wildest imagination of our ancestors.” The authors address this question in starkly different ways. Scheidel builds his case on “polycentrism,” or the fragmentation of power both within and among European states. Henrich elaborates the long recognized cultural distinctiveness of Westerners, but offers an ingenious analysis of how this came about. Surprisingly, both books locate the decisive transformations in the Early Middle Ages (400-1000 CE). Read more here.
(December 2020)
Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never
Apocalypse Never attacks the exaggerations, distortions, and hypocrisy of the environmental establishment. Author Michael Shellenberger is a lifelong environmentalist, but he charges the dominant environmental movement with dogmatic devotion to policies that are counterproductive, even harmful, especially for developing societies. Some of these misguided policies reflect a romantic infatuation with ‘nature’, but others advance concealed financial interests, as reported in this note.
(October 2020)
Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society
The notion of decadence is an ideal vehicle for cultural critique. It portrays the failures and shortcomings of society in terms of declines from previous higher standards, explicit or implicit. Ross Douthat employs this template brilliantly to portray the current failings of American society. Decadence is examined in terms of Stagnation, Sterility, Sclerosis, and Repetition. His insights have stimulated further speculations in this Note.
(September 2020)
Essay: Economic Inequality and an Imperiled Middle Class
“Economic Inequality and an Imperiled Middle Class” seeks to provide essential facts for understanding these two related phenomena and perspectives for evaluating them. Although the current form of global capitalism has brought long-term prosperity for many, the trends described here are disturbing and ominous. I wrote this essay in 2019, and since then the pandemic and economic crisis have exacerbated these conditions: the worst economic consequences have taken the livelihoods of many small business people and lower and middle-income job holders, while the wealth of the affluent has on balance increased. The essay offers no ‘solutions’ but rather argues that responsibility for these conditions lies with the political realm. For further consideration of the nexus between political and economic systems, see my “Notes” on Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology—the sequel to his seminal analysis discussed here.
(September 2020)
Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology
Unlike the economic theorizing of Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty here argues that treatment of property and economic inequality are contingent on ideologies—systems of plausible belief embodied in durable institutions. The most detailed analyses focus on France and the West, but the coverage aspires to be worldwide. The first half of the book surveys property regimes from the 18th century to the aftermath of World War I. The analysis, with accompanying data, provides unique insights into the development of Western society, a perspective that should complement conventional histories. Post-World War II, the coverage is more colored by the author’s own egalitarian ideology; emphasizing the inadequacy of social democracy and, after 1980, the ascendancy of hypercapitalism. These chapters discuss key issues, such as the emergence of the “Brahmin left” and the “collapse of the Left-Right party system of the postwar era.” The book concludes with a utopian vision of “participatory socialism” that many would find dystopian, as explained in these Notes.
(September 2020)