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possible.
Most of Lasch's critics have recalled that he started out as a man of
the left and either have chided him for "moving right" or praised him
for being sharply critical of both extremes. At times, it seems as if his oc–
casional leaning towards populism, as well as his concern with values -
including religious ones - is a bow to the right. However, he conceptu–
alizes this turn as a given of democracy, as a means of perpetuating earlier
American virtues such as independence and self-reliance. At the same time,
his glorification of populism allows Lasch to move away from his radi–
calism while remaining on some sort of political left.
Lasch, of course, advocates racial equality. But he does so as Martin
Luther King would have done: "He was a liberal in his social gospel
theology but a populist in his insistence that black people had to take
responsibility for their lives and in his praise of the petty bourgeois
virtues: hard work, sobriety, self-improvement." Had his leadership pre–
vailed, Lasch implies, we would be more likely
to
have both cultural di–
versity and the high standards that go with civic virtue and trust, and
that defy double standards which "mean second-class citizenship" and
make excuses for the "disadvantaged" rather than help push them to–
wards achievement. The integration of our racial contingents has been
embittered by the well-meaning attempts to institute social justice along
with the help of the social engineering of the mid-sixties: "it led to the
rapid deterioration of race relations," since "affirmative action gives
black elites access to the municipal bureaucracy and the media but leaves
the masses worse off than ever."
Money was no help: because the market tends to put irresistible pres–
sure onto every activity, liberals have had to turn to the state to curtail
it. But thereby they have transferred to it many functions that previously
were the purview of civic associations - the family, the neighborhood,
the church, and so on. Child care workers and social workers, therapists
and school teachers in their professionalization militate against the in–
formal, personal interactions that used
to
occur in smaller settings, so
that feelings of community have been lost and "people love humankind"
rather than their neighbors. Add to this the belief "by members of the
caring class that standards are inherently oppressive ... and reflect the
cultural hegemony of dead white European males," and the respect Lasch
perceives as a beneficial component of populism has gone by the wayside.
And since organized communitarianism interferes with personal auton–
omy, he does not perceive it as a viable solution either.
In
the rest of the book Lasch decries the loss of conversation, of
public places and spaces including the tavern, which cannot be qualita–
tively replaced by television, the shopping mall and fast-food places.
