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New Progressives, the graduates of and inheritors of the liberalism of the 1960s, have used the institutions of government, academia, the media, and the courts to gain power and influence to fundamentally change America. Takeover traces the course of action these New Progressives have taken to move America where the voters refused to go, a place where public collective interests are favored over individual rights.
Abortion was legalized through the court system. New Progressives achieved social change through semantic changes in which the eugenics of abortion and euthanasia became "women's reproductive rights" and "death with dignity." Disparaging consumption and corporate capitalism, New Progressives label economic growth as a crisis. They say America needs to downsize its economy and Americans need to change their "expectation of the good life," because our overconsumption is detrimental to the rest of the globe. How did Barack Obama, whom National Journal named the most liberal senator in 2007, ascend to the Presidency? Obama's 2008 election was not a swing of voters to the left. Obama, like a good New Progressive, both worked within the system and worked the system in order to win. Much credit belongs to the "swooning media," largely of a New Progressive ilk, which refused to question his vague policy positions. If Obama's presidency was the ultimate coup of New Progressives, ObamaCare is the ultimate feat of that presidency. Experts on both the Left and the Right say ObamaCare is "woefully underfunded." When it ultimately fails there will again be calls for reform, and New Progressive influence will likely lead not to a dismantling of the failed top-down plan but instead to a single-payer system which is what they wanted in the first place. According to Critchlow and Rorabaugh, the current economic crisis is not due to a "lack of government regulation but mediocre regulation combined with political meddling." ObamaCare will further fuel the crisis. The authors say that the U.S. is the only major G-20 nation that hasn't adopted an austerity program. Meanwhile, Obama seems "incapable of grasping the hard truths about the economy, government expenditures, or the political system that produced the crisis." (ISI Books, 2012, 288 pp., $29.95) |
Takeover is part history book and part social commentary. Critchlow and Rorabaugh examine the radicalization of law schools that produced activist lawyers who then worked within the court system to bring about "social justice" -- by regulating businesses through class action lawsuits that redistribute income.
