The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Weren't dizzying contrasts of wealth and poverty supposed to have gone out with Dickensian London?..." (more)
Key Phrases: underclass pathology, underclass culture, New York, Supreme Court, Little Man (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The legacy of the subtitle, according to Magnet, a Fortune magazine editorial board member and Manhattan Institute for Policy Research analyst, is "a liberal, left-of-central worldview" that, despite the intentions of the 1960s counterculture advocates, divides our society more fully than ever into Haves and Have-Nots. The sexual revolution and the focus on free "expressiveness" had the effect of holding "the poor back from advancement by robbing them of responsibility for their fate and thus further squelching their initiative and energy." The counterculture, as subscribed to by mainstream media, the federal courts and such figures as Ted Kennedy, befuddled the work ethic with idealistic notions of civil rights and fair wages. Finding a poverty of spirit in recent art, such as the fiction of Anne Beattie and Bret Easton Ellis, Magnet urges that we " stop the current welfare system, stop quota-based affirmative action . . . stop letting bums expropriate public spaces . . . stop Afrocentric education in the schools." Magnet offers many examples of societal ills but fails to make a convincing case that the legacy of the counterculture is the culprit.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The Washington Post

To read Magnet is to realize that the conservative critique of contemporary America is the more--indeed the only--radical critique just now.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books; Rep Sub edition (February 7, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893554023
• ISBN-13: 978-1893554023
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #627,397 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why The World Is The Way It Is, July 7, 2000

By	Vincent Basehart (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

I read the original edition of this book and it is still the most important social commentary I've ever read. For those who have ever asked, "Why is the world the way it is today?", this book will explain it.

Magnet traces all of our current social problems- from crime to drug addiction, broken families to pregnant teenagers to school violence - to the liberal social experimentation of the Sixties and early Seventies, using pure a priori logic, not demagoguery.

Additionally he shows how those once radical ideas have become our mainstream, unquestioned assumptions, the very Establishment itself; conservatives are now the radicals shaking up the system.

Enormously enlightening for anyone who really wants to understand our current social predicaments.

28 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An eye-opening treatise!, August 4, 2000

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

History and political science blend in this survey of the 1960s' legacy to modern times. Here Magnet argues that the radical events of the 1960s brought today's underclass and minorities into existence, producing changes in marriage and parenting which often led to dependency and closed doors for the underclass. An eye-opening treatise, The Dream and the Nightmare advocates a return to values honoring work, responsibility and law to help lift the barriers of poverty.

53 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Only What Went Wrong, but How It Can Be Reversed, April 29, 2001

By	miked99 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

Myron Magnet's The Dream and the Nightmare is brilliant because it not only gives the statistics and endless accounts of what has gone wrong since the start of the United States' mid-20th century cultural revolution, but it also explains WHY those areas deteriorated (some have improved, obviously) and how they can be reversed. Along with Marvin Olasky, Myron Magnet is considered a foundational author of the compassionate conservatism philosophy that President Bush campaigned upon during the 2000 presidential election. This is Magnet's manifesto for that philosophy.

In this book Mr. Magnet traces the roots of the radical shift that the privileged classes, the "Haves" as he labels them, enacted upon the culture of America and the entire Western world. He documents how in the middle 1900s these intellectuals, with a worldview based in Marxism and Freudianism, used America's universities and judiciaries to take hold of the system and transmogrify it to fit their causes, many which were originally well-meaning but ultimately, and tragically, misguided. The results of their success in turning America's previous culture on its head are seen throughout our society, but its effects have been far more pernicious to the impoverished, or, the "Have-nots." The change in crime, illiteracy, illegitimacy, income and many other telling rates from the American underclass began almost instantly and are now staggeringly depressing. Most of us have seen these numbers repeated ad infinitum, but this book will show you how and why these things happened in a way that many other social commentaries will not. This is a fantastic work that addresses a sad topic with an optimistic tone. It is one that all Americans should read and explain to their families and children as well.