Urban riots, campus rebels, mayhem, and rapidly rising rates of violent crime — much of what is going on today looks like deja vu all over again for those of us old enough to remember the late 1960s and early 1970s. The ’60s, as these wearying years are often labeled, produced many dismaying policy mistakes, many of which are still with us.
For an illuminating account of those blunders, and a glimpse of emerging successes that were little noticed at the time, you might want to consult Amity Shlaes’s new book Great Society: A New History, released late last fall just before the current mayhem was set in motion. It’s a fitting companion to The Forgotten Man, her 2007 account of the New Deal. In both books, she challenges the conventional wisdom of the liberal narrative by focusing on crucial actors and pivotal developments that liberal historians have ignored.
I reviewed Great Society for the Wall Street Journal last November. As I look back on Shlaes’s book and my review, I am struck by the considerable intellectual heft and moral seriousness of some of the liberal policymakers of that period — Walter Reuther, Michael Harrington, Sargent Shriver, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Their positive qualities, and their own uncertainties at some points, make the sad results of Great Society policies all the more tragic.
Who are their equivalents today? The Vox folk writers are busy justifying speech suppression, the Black Lives Matter strategists are encouraging violence, and policy veterans of the Obama-Biden administration seem to have been swept aside by not-very-impressive leftists. Deja vu, or second time as farce?
