On reading political writing from the 1990s
Recently I've been reading through Left Hooks, Right Crosses: A Decade of Political Writing, edited by Christopher Caldwell and the late Christopher Hitchens. It's a collection of 40 essays written during the 1990s, nearly all under the Clinton administration.
It's been a revelation. I was 7 years old when Clinton was elected the first time. I came of age politically and intellectually during the second Bush's two terms, and I didn't start consistently reading serious—or at least good—political writing from across the ideological spectrum until Obama's second term.
That means I'm basically a novice in these matters. I have a fairly good sense of the historical scope and shape of these arguments; I've read political philosophy, old and new; I'm conversant with what's going on at present. But I've little idea what it was like in the moment, in weekly and monthly political journalism, in each of the previous decades, even those I lived through.
So as a window into the debates, fights, and major moments and figures in the 1990s, this volume is indispensable. But more than that, it's been revelatory as a window on our own moment and the arguments and people involved. Because in one sense everything has changed, and in another, almost nothing.
Consider who's featured in the book: Thomas Frank and David Brooks, Adolph Reed Jr. and Andrew Sullivan, Mark Lilla and Tucker Carlson, Jonathan Rauch and David Rieff. These are only a few of the names of writers and thinkers "still in the mix." (Not to mention Caldwell, who is a major voice on the right today, and Hitchens, whose influence lingers still.)
And consider the topics: free speech and political correctness; gay rights and liberative intersectionality; postmodern fraud in the academy; military adventurism abroad; classical liberalism, contested and reclaimed; authoritarian populism; unchecked executive power, lies, and sexual abuse; so-called civility in public discourse; race and IQ; reactionary conservatism's left-friendly critique of globalization and American empire; the need for conservatism to evolve beyond Reaganism; the staying power of the socialist vision in liberal capitalist America; left-right shared contempt for Clintonist centrism; the ongoing and future demands of mass immigration to Europe and the U.S. from the global south; and more.
It isn't that we're simply replaying the culture wars and political battles of the 1990s, though in some respects we are—where the "we" in question is even, at times, the very same soldiers who fought on the front lines more than two decades ago. It's that the seeds of a generation ago have finally borne fruit, and in retrospect, you can see the organic growth from one era to another. And reversing the line of sight, some of that era's political thinkers actually did see 2019 coming: which suggests they might be worth listening to today, too.
One other effect worth mentioning: reading the consistently apocalyptic tone of political journalism under Clinton, especially as the turn of the millennium approached, has actually served to de-eschatologize the moment we are currently living through. Not to say it isn't bad, or in some respects genuinely new. But it isn't the End. We're not living in the Last Days. There's no Antichrist on the scene.
Sobriety clarifies. Sober analysis can describe in detail the extent to which things are bad, and why, and offer suggestions for what might make things better—all without pushing the rhetorical doomsday clock to midnight, or projecting onto the situation or the reader the exhaustion and fear besetting the writer's psyche. (Here I imagine Clinton's impeachment hearings plus Twitter. God save us all.)
For those reasons and more, I heartily recommend Left Hooks, Right Crosses. And if similar volumes for other American decades exist, drop me a line; I would love to get my hands on them.
It's been a revelation. I was 7 years old when Clinton was elected the first time. I came of age politically and intellectually during the second Bush's two terms, and I didn't start consistently reading serious—or at least good—political writing from across the ideological spectrum until Obama's second term.
That means I'm basically a novice in these matters. I have a fairly good sense of the historical scope and shape of these arguments; I've read political philosophy, old and new; I'm conversant with what's going on at present. But I've little idea what it was like in the moment, in weekly and monthly political journalism, in each of the previous decades, even those I lived through.
So as a window into the debates, fights, and major moments and figures in the 1990s, this volume is indispensable. But more than that, it's been revelatory as a window on our own moment and the arguments and people involved. Because in one sense everything has changed, and in another, almost nothing.
Consider who's featured in the book: Thomas Frank and David Brooks, Adolph Reed Jr. and Andrew Sullivan, Mark Lilla and Tucker Carlson, Jonathan Rauch and David Rieff. These are only a few of the names of writers and thinkers "still in the mix." (Not to mention Caldwell, who is a major voice on the right today, and Hitchens, whose influence lingers still.)
And consider the topics: free speech and political correctness; gay rights and liberative intersectionality; postmodern fraud in the academy; military adventurism abroad; classical liberalism, contested and reclaimed; authoritarian populism; unchecked executive power, lies, and sexual abuse; so-called civility in public discourse; race and IQ; reactionary conservatism's left-friendly critique of globalization and American empire; the need for conservatism to evolve beyond Reaganism; the staying power of the socialist vision in liberal capitalist America; left-right shared contempt for Clintonist centrism; the ongoing and future demands of mass immigration to Europe and the U.S. from the global south; and more.
It isn't that we're simply replaying the culture wars and political battles of the 1990s, though in some respects we are—where the "we" in question is even, at times, the very same soldiers who fought on the front lines more than two decades ago. It's that the seeds of a generation ago have finally borne fruit, and in retrospect, you can see the organic growth from one era to another. And reversing the line of sight, some of that era's political thinkers actually did see 2019 coming: which suggests they might be worth listening to today, too.
One other effect worth mentioning: reading the consistently apocalyptic tone of political journalism under Clinton, especially as the turn of the millennium approached, has actually served to de-eschatologize the moment we are currently living through. Not to say it isn't bad, or in some respects genuinely new. But it isn't the End. We're not living in the Last Days. There's no Antichrist on the scene.
Sobriety clarifies. Sober analysis can describe in detail the extent to which things are bad, and why, and offer suggestions for what might make things better—all without pushing the rhetorical doomsday clock to midnight, or projecting onto the situation or the reader the exhaustion and fear besetting the writer's psyche. (Here I imagine Clinton's impeachment hearings plus Twitter. God save us all.)
For those reasons and more, I heartily recommend Left Hooks, Right Crosses. And if similar volumes for other American decades exist, drop me a line; I would love to get my hands on them.
