The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture [Hardcover]

Brink Lindsey is neither an ideologue nor a cultural warrior. He is an especially gifted storyteller whose enthusiasm for his subject is obvious, genuine, and endearing. The Age of Abundance is the product of an objective inquiry, and its conclusions about where America is and the implications about where it is heading are refreshingly nonpartisan and hopeful.
In the book's subtitles, Lindsey promises to answer two questions: How prosperity transformed America's politics and culture? Why the culture wars made us more libertarian? He fulfills his obligations with compelling data, anecdotes, pop culture allusions, and sundry vignettes from each of the post-WWII decades.
The driving theme of the book is that, in the aftermath of 15 years of economic depression followed by world war, America, with its accumulated wealth and pent up demand was on the verge of a socio-economic big bang. With human sustenance all but assured for most Americans, the realm of material necessity (where all of life's energies were devoted to fulfilling life's basic requirements), which had defined the human condition for millennia, was relegated to history. The possibilities for human enterprise, association, expression, and actualization were about to change.
Providing the locomotion for the vast and rapid social change and its echoes was the dawn of the Age of Aquarius (the countercultural emergence) and the subsequent Evangelical Revival in response. One of Brink's gifts is his capacity for succinct interpretation. Thus, the essence of the culture wars boils down to this: "one side attacked capitalism while rejoicing in its fruits [the Aquarians, broadly defined]; the other side celebrated capitalism while denouncing its fruits as poisonous[...]."

Putting aside the thesis and Lindsey's explanation of how the data and events comport with that thesis, the book is rich in its recounting of recent history, and some of the colorful, emblematic characters of those respective decades. As a baby boomer myself (born during the last year of the official boom, 1964) I was somewhat nostalgic, even wistful until it dawned on me how absolutely silly and naïve we have been at times during our cultural journey.

Lindsey's conclusion and its implications are compelling. Instead of the polarized, bimodal, red state/blue state socio-political characterization of the American political landscape (the framework that Tim Russert and Chris Matthews will use to explain everything this upcoming political season), Lindsey sees a purplish bell curve, with the red and the blue relegated to the respective tails. Among other sources of support for that conclusion, Lindsey cites survey data that finds 66 percent of Americans consider themselves moderate, slightly conservative, or slightly liberal, while only 21 percent consider themselves conservative or extremely conservative, and only 13 percent call themselves liberal or extremely liberal.

Accepting Lindsey's interpretation does not require fealty to any particular creed. He is not argumentative or defensive. If he is trying to sell you on his interpretation, it is a soft sell. Here are the data; these are the events; this is how it all fits into the big picture. You can almost hear Lindsey whispering, "Isn't that cool?" He enjoys discovery, and I could picture him reading his own book again and again wearing an expression of wonderment as he turns the pages.

(By the way, in recognition that there is even more to tell in excess of what can be bound between book covers, Lindsey has devoted his website to the project of keeping Age of Abundance a "living document," by introducing interactive materials devoted to the themes of the book, and post WWII history generally. Check it out at [...])

In an increasingly complex world, books that distill meaning out of all the noise -- that give us a strong sense of where we are and how we got there -- are both rare and precious. Brink Lindsey (my colleague at the Cato Institute) has written one of those books. The Age of Abundance tells the story of how the economic success of post-WWII America created space for a renewed quest for meaning, and how that quest reshaped our culture. The new material abundance created rapid and sometimes frightening change, which helped motivate the resurgence of fundamentalist Christianity. But the same abundance also enabled young baby boomers -- chafing under the constraints of "square" business-as-usual conservative America -- to undertake new experiments in living, producing the cultural convulsions of the 1960s. According to Lindsey, the rise of Christian fundamentalism and counter-cultural liberation were reactions to the same root causes, and today's "culture wars" faintly echo the original dynamic. But for the most part, the culture wars are over, and American society has produced a soft libertarian consensus -- you know, "socially liberal, fiscally consrvative" -- that blends elements of the conservative religious right, and the radical countercultural left. This doesn't make the arbiters of either left or right orthodoxy very happy, but it suits most Americans just fine. In conclusion Lindsey persuasively lay out a moderate libertarian politics that transcends the tired "red state/blue state" dialectic.

But Age of Abundance is less an argument and more a story. This is a historically rich book, bulging with fascinating historical detail that explains how we got from there to here more plausibly than any book in recent memory. Lindsey is a vivid writer, with a real gift for punchy formulations, and an excellent storyteller, able to keep a gripping narrative rolling while at the same time marshalling data to support his case. If this book has a weakness, it may be that it is overloaded with information. In places, Lindsey piles on more facts and historical detail than it is really possible to absorb. But, incredibly, the story never seems to bog down.

This is an important book that will leave you feeling like contemporary America has suddenly snapped into crisp focus. More importantly, it's a good read full of great stories and great ideas that both entertains and provokes.

Brink Lindsey of the libertarian Cato Institute recounts the story of American prosperity that followed World War II. Although countless others have written about this phenomenon, Lindsey's take of these events is fresh and insightful, and, not surprisely, vindicates his libertarian worldview.

According to Lindsey, the mass affluence that ushered in after World War II lifted us out of "the realm of necessity" and into "the realm of freedom." For the first time in human history the vast majority no longer struggled to obtain the basic necessities of life. Many would debate this point, but statistically one could prove that even the poor were better off than in previous time or place.

Leaving the age of scarcity and entering the age of abundance, Americans were suddenly faced proliferation of choices, arguably turning them into a different kind of people. Not only did this unleash a quest for material wealth, but also a desire for political and cultural change. The age of abundance produced two antithetical social movements that upended the peaceful harmony of the 1950s. For the left of the 1960s and 70s, mass affluence created new possibilities for personal growth and greater tolerance and opportunity for women and minorities. The left, however, was dismissive of business culture and traditional family values, and failed to see how they were in fact responsible for the prosperity that they were enjoying. On the other side was the evangelical Christian right who was more protective of capitalism and tradition, but who were very intolerant of the newfound freedoms and lifestyles that were being explored.

During the 1980s and 90s, the cultural wars between these two camps raged, especially on election years. The blue-staters calling for greater political freedoms and the red-staters holding the fort on traditonal family values. Lindsey argues that these two camps are of late coming around to seeing the merits of the other's point of view. He writes that "today's typical red-state conservative is considerably bluer on race relations, the role of women, and sexual morality than his predecessor of a generation ago." And likewise, "the typical blue-state liberal is considerably redder than his predecessor when it comes to the importance of markets to economic growth, the virtues of the two-parent family and the morality of American geopolitical power." According to Lindsey, we are now living in a period of "libertarian synthesis."

This book could be called a feel-good libertarian parable. It praises the wisdom of the broad middle-class that not only reveres tradition but also tolerates greater freedoms than previous generations. The majority now feels comfortable with libertarianism. During election years hot-button issues are still ignited and battlelines are still drawn, but this has more to do with the media and electioneering than the real viewpoints of the majority. The reality is more complex and less divisive than the media would have us believe. We now have social peace because there is a greater tolerance for alternative views and lifestyles.