What Is the “American Contradiction”?

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I first met Paul Starr in the summer of 1978 when I was working as a college intern in the speechwriting office of Jimmy Carter’s White House. I remember thinking how smart he was, and sure enough, a few years later in 1984, he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Social Transformation of American Medicine. That book is so important that you cannot understand the history of medicine in the United States without it. He did something similar with The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications, and he’s written a ton of other insightful stuff from his perch as a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton. In between, he co-founded The American Prospect. Starr’s new book is American Contradiction: Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now. It offers a significant and convincing new theory of how we have come to this sorry pass in American public life.

Note: This interview originally ran on the Substack Old Goats with Jonathan Alter with no paywall. Subscribe to Old Goats to support Jon’s work.

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JONATHAN ALTER: Thanks for doing this, Paul. First, how do you describe what you call “the American Contradiction”?

PAUL STARR: The title works two ways. First, it’s about the contradiction between the America of Obama and the America of Trump. The subtitle of my book is “Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now.” The first half covers what I call the American revolutions of the 20th century. Where we are now is the politics of revenge—the negation of many post-World War II changes in race, rights, and gender.

On a larger scale, though, the United States was born in the contradiction between freedom and racial slavery. Throughout history, this underlying conflict has shown up in many forms. The argument of my book is that the struggle against the legacies of slavery—against Jim Crow—became the point of departure for a series of movements, from civil rights, to feminism, to gay rights. The Black struggle set a paradigm for legal, cultural, and economic claims, and other groups picked up those models. The reaction against them has been formative for the country, and we’re now in the throes of the most radical reaction yet.

JONATHAN ALTER: Let’s dig into that. Clearly, we’ve never had a reaction of this type from the very top. That’s what’s different: Trump is president. In the past, right-wing demagogues didn’t have that much power. But some people say American history is like a sine curve—periodic ups and downs—and extrapolating from the present ignores that pattern. So, shouldn’t the cyclical nature of our history make us more hopeful? Think of the Palmer Raids and the KKK resurgence after WWI, but then FDR helped the country recover from that.

PAUL STARR: Parts of the past are encouraging, and you’re right, with Roosevelt, we recovered from the reaction in the 1920s you mentioned. But we were lucky. It didn’t have to turn out that way. I like Larry Bartels and Chris Achen’s book Democracy for Realists—it shows recovery depended a lot on who happened to be in power during the Depression. Luck played a role. There’s no guarantee the sine curve always brings us back; we don’t know that things must ultimately be progressive. What I do believe is that the threat to the Republic is now the most serious since the Civil War.

JONATHAN ALTER: So, your view is that when King or Obama said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” they were being idealistic?

PAUL STARR: It’s a happy illusion—useful as inspiration for presidents or movement leaders. But I don’t think analysts should assume any inevitability about it.

JONATHAN ALTER: I don’t assume inevitability, but I look at places like the Philippines, Brazil, or even Hungary today [Orban is very unpopular]—where eventually the worm turns, even where democratic traditions are weaker than they are here. In South America, 50 years ago all but Venezuela were dictatorships; today all but Venezuela are democracies in some form or other. Things aren’t fated to recover, but neither are authoritarian takeovers fated to last.

PAUL STARR: Absolutely. There are lots of countries oscillating between authoritarianism and episodes of democracy. Our history’s been mainly positive, with strong institutions. But one lesson from Trumpism is that those institutions aren’t as strong as we thought. Trump has trampled checks and balances, the courts haven’t always upheld rights as we assumed, and that’s different. The real danger is not just Trump’s attitude toward democratic norms, but also the Supreme Court, which lately has embraced radical changes enabling more presidential power. The threat is the combination of an unchecked president and a willing Court.

JONATHAN ALTER: Let’s go back—you use the metaphor that America isn’t a city on a hill, but a city on a fault line. What do you mean?

PAUL STARR: It’s in contrast to the “city on a hill” image, which Reagan popularized. There’s a big underlying rift—an unresolved contradiction—that periodically quakes our society. It’s as if America were built on a geological fault. We have tremors and the risk of an earthquake that could reduce [the Republic] to rubble. That’s the danger we’re facing, in ways most didn’t think possible.

JONATHAN ALTER: Like what? What did you not think would happen?

PAUL STARR: I didn’t expect the federal government would send troops into American cities on false pretenses of disorder—that’s happening now. We used to have presidential restraint—for example, with the unqualified pardon clause. Presidents used it within limits. Trump, though, uses it without restraint, and with loyalists placed into the DOJ, FBI, and now the government has the potential to work for personal vengeance. And Trump can always pardon more before leaving office.

JONATHAN ALTER: I’ve written about this as an extortion racket—and we’ve seen a totally corrupted DOJ. But we had that with Nixon, and the scale of things like COINTELPRO’s spying [FBI surveillance in the 1960s and 1970s] was worse. But Ed Levi [Gerald Ford’s attorney general] restored integrity to the DOJ under Ford within a year. So when people say the damage now can’t be fixed for generations, isn’t that historically shortsighted?

PAUL STARR: This isn’t Watergate or post-Watergate. During Watergate, Congress still worked as a check.

JONATHAN: But how strong was that really? Most Republicans stuck with Nixon until it wasn’t politically possible anymore. After the final tape, and with Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott counting heads, they finally told Nixon he had to resign. Was there really this brave Republican stand?

PAUL STARR: The major difference now is that Trump has a movement, the MAGA movement, disciplining the GOP and discouraging dissent. He retaliates. That structure—a leader controlling both a movement and a party—gives far more personal control than presidents usually have. Congress and the party lack the institutional independence we traditionally expect.

JONATHAN: But isn’t that also because, during Watergate, Democrats controlled Congress? There was institutional balance.

PAUL STARR: Yes, but today’s Supreme Court is another major difference. Nixon lost the tapes case, and even his appointees ruled against him. Today’s Court is far more partisan and much more aligned with Trump. It’s not comparable to what existed before.

JONATHAN: I’m not arguing that things aren’t worse now, just about our powers to recover. Do you think recovery is possible?

PAUL STARR: I think we can recover. But it will take both new popular movements and institutional reforms.

JONATHAN ALTER: You end your book with that hope. Is relying on that a long-range project, or do you see changes we could make in the near term?

PAUL STARR: We need both. I lay out some changes in an American Prospect called “The Premature Guide to Post-Trump Reform,” which I’ve joked could be called “the premature, over-ambitious, and yet inadequate guide to post-Trump reform.” But both popular movements and institutional changes are required—though I don’t have a detailed prescription.

JONATHAN ALTER: Let’s get to the history. You draw a line from the Lost Cause idea, as Southerners described the Civil War, through to MAGA. Some Republicans would object [and say] that’s a cheap shot. They’re not segregationists.

PAUL STARR: I’m not equating the exact pasts, but there is a vision of a lost America Republicans are referencing. For many, it means the 1950s—the “normal” world after WWII. That’s why that era starts my book. I cite a poll: two-thirds of Democrats say post-1950s changes made America better; two-thirds of Republicans say the opposite. The 1950s became the benchmark for normalcy, especially for people who grew up then and later felt jarred by subsequent change. For some, liberation and civil rights were positive. For others, it felt like the loss of moral clarity and consensus. We had this “area of American agreement,” as one NBC executive called it—a consensus politics, which never included everyone, but nonetheless felt solid. Now, people pine for that, and the loss contributes to polarization.

JONATHAN ALTER: Even historians like Louis Hartz in the 1950s developed what was called a “consensualist” school. That said, there was the George Wallace line and also economic nostalgia, like for the 1970s, before deindustrialization. How do you separate resentment about a changing America from the economic anxieties?

PAUL STARR: It’s a tragic coincidence: social movements overturned traditional hierarchies—white over Black, men over women, straight over queer—while economic shifts from technology and policy (free trade, deregulation) undermined manufacturing jobs and economic security in areas built on them. Both threatened the position of working men in different ways. It’s understandable that some felt Democrats weren’t looking after their interests on issues like trade and immigration, and resented the simultaneous social changes. That’s how the working-class political shift happened.

It’s understandable that some felt Democrats weren’t looking after their interests on issues like trade and immigration, and resented the simultaneous social changes. That’s how the working-class political shift happened.

JONATHAN ALTER: You don’t use “neoliberal” much in your book. I have a question about that term and its application to Carter, for example. Carter never deregulated Wall Street.

PAUL STARR: Look in my footnotes—I push back on Gary Gerstle’s Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism narrative. I don’t say neoliberalism caused everything. The term is used too broadly and often isn’t clear.

JONATHAN ALTER: I saw a great piece by David Greenberg about how “neoliberal” is used as a slur, rooted in misunderstandings. It unfairly slanders people like Charlie Peters [my mentor], Gary Hart—people committed to liberal ends but with different means.

PAUL STARR: There’s American “neoliberalism” à la Charlie Peters, and the European variant, which has a different background. I use it in a narrow way: the effort to bring back what used to be called “laissez-faire.”

JONATHAN ALTER: The broad use of “neoliberals” slimes all kinds of Democrats unfairly as if they supported the whole right-wing deregulatory agenda, which they and we at the Washington Monthly never did. The word should be retired.

PAUL STARR: I once ran The American Prospect from Princeton. In our second issue, Bob Kuttner criticized neoliberalism, which our co-founder Bob Reich read as an attack on him. Now he attacks neoliberalism.

JONATHAN ALTER: It shows how careers and positions change. Back to your book. You reminded me that, for long periods, a partisan press didn’t undermine democracy—maybe the fragmentation and intense opinion journalism isn’t as big a problem as it seems. In a way, Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” pamphlet was basically a Substack newsletter. In that sense, the postwar “Cronkite consensus” was unique but maybe the return of the partisan press itself might give us new institutions and movements.

PAUL STARR: In my research, I argue the 1830s penny press—much more partisan—was part of a robust democracy, letting parties communicate with their supporters and drive higher voter turnout. Earlier historians called it the “Dark Age” of journalism, but I saw it as a free market of ideas.

Fact-checking today is much higher than decades ago, but it’s not balanced: one side honors facts; the other, less so. Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” are a symptom. Yochai Benkler’s Network Propaganda tracks stories—on the left, falsehoods rarely reach the major news media like The New York Times; on the right, they often do reach Fox. The media ecosystems work differently.

JONATHAN ALTER: You make a distinction in your book, especially about Latinos, between identifying as and identifying with. What do you mean?

PAUL STARR: Most people think of identity as a matter of identifying as Black, Latino, or white. But “identifying with” means immigrants may aspire to be like successful white Americans, believing in the land of opportunity. Many Hispanics identify as white on the Census—racial categories don’t predict assimilation or political behavior clearly. Hispanic political patterns fluctuate a lot—2024’s vote for Trump isn’t necessarily a trend. There’s been a category error—a POC “illusion”—merging groups that don’t share political trajectories. That worked during the Obama era, but isn’t stable.

JONATHAN ALTER: That suggests Latinos might be becoming more like the Irish, Italians and Jews. Fascinating. Let’s look ahead—what’s the best way forward for Democrats?

PAUL STARR: Progressives and centrists have to find common ground. Old policy arguments—affirmative action, free trade—are moot. New challenges like AI and economic turmoil may require limiting great wealth and monopoly power. Both sides should find common ground on immigration. Most Americans actually favor immigration when managed properly, but Biden’s team squandered early goodwill by failing to control the border and losing public confidence.

JONATHAN ALTER: What about the “popularist” view—crafting positions based on what polls say the base wants, or do you favor bold, even unpopular stances?

PAUL STARR: Popular positions are better, but Democrats need to break stereotypes. New candidates must demonstrate they’re not the “same old” Democrats. Whether it’s progressive or moderate, it has to be a big-tent hybrid. The party can’t succeed if factions turn on each other. Democrats will need someone who’s not strictly in either camp—someone who can balance concerns, even on sensitive issues like trans rights or border enforcement.

JONATHAN ALTER: On immigration, for example, some Latino groups were labeled “pull up the ladder” types if they wanted more enforcement, but the administration missed deeper currents about values and fairness.

PAUL STARR: That backlash even came from other immigrants, pointing out unequal treatment. Immigration has been a social triumph, but the [Biden] administration lost control of the narrative. Many Americans, after Trump, were ready for sensible reform, but Biden’s team missed the moment.

JONATHAN ALTER: Thanks, Paul.

Note: This interview originally ran on the Substack Old Goats with Jonathan Alter with no paywall. Subscribe to Old Goats to support Jon’s work.