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The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class
John Batchelor show ^ | 17 September 2016 | John Batchelor interviews author Fred Siegel

Posted on 09/18/2016 1:45:51 PM PDT by Lorianne

Podcast interview 39:40

The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class by Fred Siegel.

"What we think of as liberalism today—the top and bottom coalition we associate with President Obama—began not with Progressivism or the new deal, but rather in the wake of the post-WWI disillusionment with American society.

The Revolt Against the Masses explores the inner life of American liberalism over the past 90 years, beginning with liberalism’s foundational writers and thinkers—such as Herbert Croly, Randolph Bourne, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis, and H.L. Mencken—who despised the new worlds of mass production, mass politics, mass culture. These liberals sought to establish a true aristocracy that would serve as a counterpoint to the debasements of modern society. It was then in the seminal 1920s, that the strong strain of snobbery and contempt for the middle class, so pervasive today in the Hamptons, the New Yorker, HBO, and the Sierra Club, first defined liberalism.

Today’s brand of Barack Obama liberalism has gone further, displacing the old Main Street middle class with public sector workers, crony capitalists, and those elite arbiters of style and taste Siegel calls the liberal gentry. The Revolt Against the Masses explains how this came to be and why liberals continue to insist they act on behalf of the best interests of the middle class, even if the damned fools don’t know it."

https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Against-Masses-Liberalism-Undermined/dp/1594037957/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474168553&sr=1-1&keywords=fred+siegel


TOPICS: Books/Literature; History
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 09/18/2016 1:45:51 PM PDT by Lorianne
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To: Lorianne

“The Revolt Against the Masses explains how this came to be and why liberals continue to insist they act on behalf of the best interests of the middle class, even if the damned fools don’t know it.”

That sums up every gov worker and inside the beltway pol’s attitude to a tee.

Sick of it.


2 posted on 09/18/2016 2:02:40 PM PDT by JPJones (George Washington's Tariffs were Patriotic. Build a Wall and Build a Wall of tariffs.)
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To: Lorianne
Does this sound like a liberal to you?

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”

---- H L Mencken

Putting it bluntly ...

Whether it was a conservative purveyor of cultural bombast like H.L. Mencken, a liberal chronicler of the vapidity of Midwestern life like Sinclair Lewis, or a radical critic of capitalism and business like Thorstein Veblen—these are three of hundreds of possible examples—there was a unifying tone of disapproval of mainstream American life



3 posted on 09/18/2016 2:04:26 PM PDT by sparklite2 (The game overs whether you play it or not.)
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To: Lorianne
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."―John F. Kennedy
4 posted on 09/18/2016 2:05:09 PM PDT by Lopeover (2016 Election is about allegiance to the United States!)
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To: Lopeover

Do you know the context of the JFK quote? JFK had a few good ones, a rising lifts all boats, etc.


5 posted on 09/18/2016 2:13:19 PM PDT by joshua c (Cut the cord! Don't pay for the rope they hang you with.)
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To: Lorianne

I’ve said this before and gotten people pissed, but I don’t mean to. In the same way the concept of “absolute value” in math doesn’t care whether a number is positive or negative, ie the absolute value of -100 is still 100, Leftists have analyzed motherhood as having an absolute value of tyranny. And so, the tyranny of Leftism has been pitched enormously successfully to “moms” as “making sense.”

Mothers are tyrants. They have absolute power over their children and run the household and receive massive support and service from their men, all men, and society itself. And they don’t have to be rational or logical or correct and they’re almost always indulged - and they know it.This is done for them because of two things - one, the absolute value of reproduction to society, and two, the tempering of that tyranny through what is called a mother’s love.

Well, thought the Leftists, what if you got rid of that mother’s love? You’d have millions of coddled tyrants, narcissistic sadists, an army of cruel morons who would vote for their husband-and-father replacement-tyrant- female-Leftists, no matter what.

And that’s Hillary’s Army. That’s the 47% that doesn’t care what she does, because they’ve already raped their own lives in her service. So to them, they literally have nothing left to lose. They are angry, lonely, terrified, miserable stupid monsters, and without Hillary, they have absolutely nothing. But oh boy, as “mom” they get to be socially sanctioned motherhood tyrants - and get away with using that tyranny for political purposes.

That’s “The Sisterhood.” And if they only knew it, Hillary laughs at how stupid they are, because no one on this planet hates women more than Hillary Rotten Clinton. And if she ever gets into power, she’s going to kill every one of them.


6 posted on 09/18/2016 2:13:41 PM PDT by Talisker (One who commands, must obey.)
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To: JPJones

Charles Murray has written at length on this topic, how the increasing cultural isolation of separate classes has enabled it to happen.
When all the top 5% members live in the same neighborhoods, attend the same schools, shop at the same restaurants, watch the same TV shows - and it differs from what the middle and lower classes do, it is easy to label them stupid, ignorant, irrational, immoral.
It is also easy to understand when the liberals have branded themselves as smart, educated, rational, moral, tolerant, the elite to protect and guide the stupid welfare class to which they ascribe all middle class members as being slightly better than but worse for not doing what the elites tell them to do.


7 posted on 09/18/2016 2:27:34 PM PDT by tbw2
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To: tbw2

“Charles Murray has written at length on this topic, how the increasing cultural isolation of separate classes has enabled it to happen.”

Well then the answer is simple: The ruling class needs to be “de-isolated”.


8 posted on 09/18/2016 2:39:30 PM PDT by JPJones (George Washington's Tariffs were Patriotic. Build a Wall and Build a Wall of tariffs.)
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To: Talisker

Wow, that’s a very good point. I was just responding to a YouTube troll who tried insulting me cuz I don’t want kids. I don’t doubt that I’d be a good mother if I had to be... I just choose not to because I wouldnt want them around this kind of behavior or mindset. I’m old enough to have a teenager (I teach them instead), but this coddling & narcissistic behavior is plagueing society right now. Paul Joseph Watson touched up on this childish behavior by saying some of these Millennials act like this because of absent parents when they’re children.... Because everyone has to work to make ends meet (I work 2 jobs & only have fluffy children!!), yet our society rewards more kids & more kids. I just don’t get it... What about rewarding good parenting instead of just being a parent???? My dad actually made my mom quit her job to focus on raising my brother & I, & I get that now... to focus on the family (& she listened to that Dr Dobson show).

I hear a lot of teachers & parents complain about “helicopter parenting”. Not surprisingly, the kids I teach who seem really well adjusted & genuinely nice always have very nice mothers. Any woman can be a mother.... Any woman capable of doing so can pop out a kid. But not all of them are capable of being a GOOD mother. It feels like this focus away from family & onto things like test scores, getting into a good school, excelling in competition (like sports & music), & “everyone’s a winner without hardwork” mentality is hurting our society big time, & it’s noticeably backfiring. We can’t have a healthy society without mentally & emotionally successful people. I just read an article yesterday about these Stanford University students that’re having difficulties adjusting to life, when these are the types of people that look good on paper. There’s more to life than just test scores!!! If they’re not getting enough love & encouragement at home, then where else are they supposed to get it from??? Teachers & other authority figures can only do so much.


9 posted on 09/18/2016 3:03:14 PM PDT by pessimystiva
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To: Lorianne
Let's not forget that those who have driven "liberalism" since the 1960s have been communist sympathizers and supporters.

Who was it that the hard left, beginning with Marx and Engles hated and demonized? The bourgeoisie. And just is that class of people? The "middle class!"

Of course the left has hated, demonized, and since they gained power in the government, worked to destroy the middle class!

Mark

10 posted on 09/18/2016 3:39:19 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: pessimystiva

Motherhood isn’t tyranny because of good and bad mothers - motherhood is tyranny because it’s a form of power that is not subject to debate or election or votes. People laugh about it - “when Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy,” and “what Mama says, goes,” and “she who must be obeyed.” But the structure of that kind of power is tyranny - it’s absolute. And, obviously, it’s needed for a child, not just because they can’t understand anything else because they can’t reason yet, but also because they NEED that kind of psychological structure to feel safe - otherwise they become frightened “snowflakes.”

Feminist “moms” rape that whole thing. They have no hearts, they’re cruel, they hate men and they deny children the precious and clear tyranny of a mother’s love. Everyone has heard these cruel idiots “reasoning” with their toddlers in stores. But all they’re doing is validating treating children with uncertainty to the other nearby liberals to emulate. It’s also a warning that any liberal mother who starts waking up will be attacked as being abusive.

Liberal “moms” are monsters. If our culture survives, they will be seen in the future as the most morally corrupt human beings to ever walk the planet. They alone have created the snowflake generation - young people literally afraid of their own shadows, because of the constant “helicoptering” they’ve received growing up that has stolen every last shred of their personal development, as their mothers ate their souls and licked their lips down to the last drop.

That’s why Hillary can run at all - because of these monsters in yoga pants, grinning with malignant pleasure over successfuly murdering the souls of their own families. That’s the REAL horror facing America - they are the creatures in the living room nobody talks about. They are the people who don’t care - literally do not care - what horrific crimes Hillary has done, but daily vow in their black hearts to vote for her no matter what. They are what make Hillary smile. They are why she spasms on towards the election, sure that her beast females will vote for her - because they will.

I don’t care if this makes me sound insane - I write it in commemoration of the OVER one hundred million dead people murdered by their own communist governments, people like you and me, who were betrayed by family members and neighbors EXACTLY like these damned soccer moms, run by government bureaucrats EXACTLY like these damned soccer moms. “Communism” didn’t do it - PEOPLE did it, weak, cruel, hypocritical and sadistic liars who WANT that form of government because it rewards and protects their perversions. And in America, those people are the feral, liberal “moms” and feminist zombies - THEY are insane, because they’ve abandoned their own hearts.


11 posted on 09/18/2016 4:00:32 PM PDT by Talisker (One who commands, must obey.)
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To: Talisker

H.L. Mencken a liberal? That’s the first time I’ve ever heard him described as such. I’ve read quite a bit of his work and I would NEVER call him a liberal. Mencken was a Classic Liberal, which is pretty much synonymous with a modern-day libertarian. He was anti-establishment, anti-statist to the max, and he did it with aplomb and humor. I wish he were around today. He’d take both parties to the cleaners.


12 posted on 09/18/2016 4:32:18 PM PDT by huckfillary
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