THE END OF THE AFFAIR? :

A Tipping Point? (Robert Kuttner, 5.6.02, American Prospect)

Malcolm Gladwell has observed, in The Tipping Point, that trends sometimes build gradually but explode suddenly. As an editor of a liberal magazine, I wonder whether we are nearly at that point with the ascendance of conservatism.

Most of the rest of the essay is silly and as a cultural conservative I'm too pessimistic to harbor much hope that we are arrived at such a Tipping Point, but it is interesting to read how embattled the Left feels these days. In his fine book, The Strange Death of American Liberalism, H. W. Brands argues that conservatism is the natural political posture of America and that the Liberal epoch was a function, almost exclusively, of the Cold War. Perhaps, just perhaps, what we are seeing is not a new tipping point, but the end of a fad, the end of the liberal craze. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 20, 2002 6:26 AM