Death of the Liberal Class
About this ebook
“Uncompromising. . . . Hedges indicts the press, the Church, the arts, labor unions, universities, and the Democratic Party for failing to protect the middle and lower classes.” —The New Yorker
History has shown time and time again that when the liberal class ceases to function, as happened in Tsarist Russia, Weimar Germany, and the former Yugoslavia, it opens a Pandora’s box of evils that infect the remnants of a civil society. In this devastating critique, Pulitzer Prize–winner Chris Hedges chronicles the gradual corruption and death of the liberal class, which no longer provides an institutional check to mitigate corporate control of politics, education, labor, the arts, religious institutions, and financial systems.
Although the liberal class was always compromised by its embrace of the power elite, as well as its deep hostility to American radicals, it nevertheless provided a mechanism to make incremental reform possible. But with the rise of the corporate state, it has been rendered impotent by its embrace of unfettered capitalism, the national security state, globalization, and staggering income inequalities. Consequently, the anger among the working and the middle class is, without a functioning liberal class, being expressed in ideologies that detest democratic institutions and the civilities of a liberal democracy.
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About the author
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. He was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he was their Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief. He is a New York Times bestselling author of sixteen books, including Empire of Illusion, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, and American Fascists. He holds a master of divinity from Harvard University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
