Book Description:Ralph Brauer defines Liberal America as a place where "government exists to keep the playing field level." The success of the American experiment, he argues, depends on how well we maintain this equity and its four cornerstones: economic justice, educational equity, voting rights, and media fairness. His book is both a political and intellectual history examining the various threats to these cornerstones, and a social and cultural chronicle. Touching on music, television, movies, and sports, Brauer's thesis is underscored by a historical discussion that begins with the New Deal and works its way to the present, ending with Global Warming and the Iraq War.
Jim Hightower actually described the book best: " The corporate and political powers have led us astray, into an alien sphere of plutocracy and autocracy. For our country to find its way home back to our democratic ideals we must have pathblazers. Ralph Brauer's book gives us a map for returning to America's founding values of fairness, justice, and opportunity for all." Unlike every other book about what is wrong with the Democratic Party and the left this one has three unique perspectives: 1) it focuses on values, 2) it explains how and why we got here covering events from the great Depression to Katrina (which forms the focus of the final chapter), 3) it makes a convincing case for what are the central values of Liberal America.