Since the late nineteenth century, the United States has been blessed with two major religious ethics. Protestantism valued rapid economic growth and Social Darwinist individualism but, after all the money had been made, also left us with disinterested public service and generous philanthropy. Shaped in large part by peasant or proletarian backgrounds in Europe, the contrasting Catholic ethic stressed obedience, nostalgia, and nepotism, but also valued solidarity and collective social action. The clash between these two ways of looking at the world explains much of modern American political experience. Catholics joined unions, supported public displays of religion, voted for urban political machines, defended their ethnic heritage, and sent their children to parochial schools. Protestants, especially high-church ones, pursued civil service reform, voted for independent or fusion candidates, endorsed separation of church and state, and took up the cause of racial minorities.



THE LIMOUSINE LIBERAL: HOW AN INCENDIARY IMAGE UNITED THE RIGHT AND FRACTURED AMERICA by Steve Fraser Basic Books, 304 pp., $27.50

Perhaps the most dramatic contrast between these ethical outlooks occurred during the New York mayoral election of 1969. In one corner stood John V. Lindsay, central casting’s version of the do-gooder WASP, while the other was occupied by the very paradigm of outer-borough ethnicity, Mario Procaccino. Lindsay is remembered for his riot-quelling walk through Harlem. Procaccino is recalled for a phrase: Lindsay, he claimed, was a “limousine liberal,” a meddler trying to improve the lot of the poor, especially the black poor, on the backs of hardworking white folks.

Steve Fraser, the author of Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life and other books on capital and labor in this country, believes that Procaccino was onto something. American history is filled with the language of right-wing populists poking fun at or stirring resentment toward upper-class liberals: The rich were, depending on the demagogue, diplomats in striped pants (Joe McCarthy); drinkers of “martinis with their little fingers up in the air” (George Wallace); a new professional class (Trotskyite-influenced neo-conservatives); and, surely the all-time champion, “the Harvard and Yale boys sent to teach our pigs birth control” (North Dakota populist William Lemke). But “limousine liberal” has one big advantage over its competitors. Hypocrisy is the charge the right loves to make against the left. “Limousine liberalism” distilled the charge into a two-word slogan: These were the folks who insisted on private schools for their children and public schools for everyone else’s, or—think of Al Gore—who lived in vast, energy-guzzling mansions while proclaiming the evils of global warming.

Fraser provides a brisk and entertaining history of limousine liberalism in all its linguistic manifestations, and his book is worth reading for that alone. Indeed, his analysis, if anything, is too prescient: Although Fraser was able to include a few words about Donald Trump in his introduction and at the end, we can be certain that the Developer of All Developers will rely on his quite vivid imagination to add new terms to the vocabulary of right-wing populism as he continues his campaign for president. The question of how certain rich and powerful people escape responsibility for their conduct by shifting the blame for whatever goes wrong to an odd alliance between those with considerable social status and those with close to none is endlessly fascinating. Class really is at the heart of American politics, just in a strikingly unusual way.

It is one thing to describe right-wing populism and another to judge it. What should we make of those who throw around the charge of limousine liberalism, as well as those at whom the charge is aimed? Is a wealthy WASP whose politics lean left to be trusted because of her admirable views or denounced because of her wealth and standing? Ought we, on the other hand, to admire those who lead the attack on the privileged because of their populism or chastise them for their racism? Fraser finds these questions difficult to answer, at least unambiguously. He seems attracted to the topic of limousine liberalism because he cannot quite make up his mind about it.