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      Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition

Introduction

PART I. THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE POSTWAR ORDER

1. John Maynard Keynes and the Collapse of the Old Order

2. The Keynesian Revolution in Political Economy

3. The New Deal Metaphor

4. American Capitalism and the ‘Inequality Crisis’

       5. America’s Fourth Revolution

      PART II. LIBERALISM AND CONSERVATISM

       6. Liberalism at High Tide

       7. Conservative Nation

       8. Is Conservatism Dead?

       9. Is Liberalism Dead?

       10. Investing in Conservative Ideas

      PART III. THE KENNEDY LEGEND AND THE LIBERAL IDEAL

       11. The Kennedy Legend

       12. JFK & Camelot

       13. Revisiting the Kennedy Assassination after Fifty Years

       14. Was JFK a Conservative?

      PART IV. THE POLITICS OF HIGHER EDUCATION

       15. The Left University

       16. Reflections on The Closing of the American Mind

       17. What’s Wrong with Our Universities?

       18. Columbia Beats Harvard

       19. Liberalism versus Humanism

       Epilogue

       Acknowledgments

       Notes

       Index

       PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

      The United States, 2016: Redistribution vs. Growth

      The first edition of Shattered Consensus was published in mid-2015, just as Donald Trump was beginning his improbable campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. The book presented a disquieting thesis: that the political consensus holding the United States together through the postwar era was coming apart and that, as a consequence, the nation was headed into an extended period of instability and upheaval. It set forth various factors—rising debt, slow economic growth, and ideological polarization—to explain why the political environment in the United States was ripe for such an upheaval. There was no way to foretell what events might trigger it, how it would proceed, or how it might eventually conclude. But the tinder was dry, the book suggested, and thus vulnerable to some combustible spark.

      While it is premature to conclude that Donald Trump and the voters supporting him will provide that spark, it is nevertheless clear that they have succeeded in challenging some of the main presuppositions of the postwar order, including the longstanding bipartisan consensus around free trade, liberal immigration policies, globalism, and the central role of the United States in policing the international system. Because his positions lie so far outside the mainstream consensus that has shaped U.S. policy through the postwar era, leaders in both political parties, along with many pundits and corporate leaders, have expressed shock and alarm at Trump’s rise and at the possibility that he might be elected president of the United States. Whether or not that happens, his campaign has demonstrated how shaky the postwar consensus now is.

      There are many factors that might account for the turbulence roiling the United States today, but economic stagnation combined with the rising costs of the entitlement state are probably the most important ones. Populist resentment against “the establishment” arises mainly from the effects of stagnating incomes, the loss of high-paying jobs, and the heavy taxes required to meet the costs of government, with illegal immigration mixed into the situation as an aggravating factor. The U.S. economy has been growing at a rate of under 2 percent per year for a decade and a half, compared with the 3.5 percent average for the period from 1950 to 2000—which goes a long way toward explaining why middle-class incomes have not been increasing, and why Trump’s populist themes have struck a chord with so many voters. The postwar order in the United States depends heavily upon robust economic

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