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In Praise of Decadence Hardcover – January 1, 1998
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- Print length218 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPrometheus
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1998
- Dimensions6 x 0.81 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101573922463
- ISBN-13978-1573922463
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- Publisher : Prometheus (January 1, 1998)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 218 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1573922463
- ISBN-13 : 978-1573922463
- Item Weight : 1.06 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.81 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #8,234,398 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8,840 in General Elections & Political Process
- #33,821 in History & Theory of Politics
- #405,530 in Social Sciences (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Jeff Riggenbach (born January 12, 1947) is an American libertarian journalist, author, editor, broadcaster, and podcaster.
Educated at the University of Houston and California State University, Dominguez Hills, Riggenbach began working in journalism and broadcasting while still a student. Over a period of nearly thirty years (1966-1995), he worked in classical and all-news radio in Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco as a writer, anchor, producer, and book and music critic;
contributed articles and reviews to numerous daily newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Washington Times; held staff writing positions on two of California's largest dailies, the Oakland Tribune and the Orange County Register; served as executive editor of the Libertarian Review and as managing editor of the Pacific Business Review; put in two years as the daily economics commentator for CNN Radio; and served as a contributing editor of several magazines, including Reason, Inquiry, and Liberty.
Throughout the 1980s, he produced the nationally syndicated daily radio programs "Byline" (well known as the radio home during the '80s of Nicholas Von Hoffman, Nat Hentoff, Michael Kinsley, Julian Bond, Howard Jarvis, and U.S. Senator William Proxmire) and "Perspective on the Economy." Since the dawn of the new century, he has written increasingly for publication on the Internet, most notably on LewRockwell.com, AntiWar.com, RationalReview.com, and Mises.org.He has long been associated with various libertarian think tanks and foundations, creating, managing, or working on special projects for the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Center for Independent Thought, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, among others. In 2005 he was named a senior fellow of the Randolph Bourne Institute, the parent nonprofit of the popular website, AntiWar.com.
Riggenbach's first book, In Praise of Decadence (1998), argued that the baby boomers turned out to be far more libertarian in their personal philosophy than had been expected. His second book, Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism (2009), argued that political events and trends in late 20th Century America had led to a rebirth of popular interest in revisionist accounts of American history. His third book, Persuaded by Reason: Joan Kennedy Taylor & the Rebirth of American Individualism (2014), combines an historical survey of American individualism with a detailed biographical profile of one of its largely unsung but enormously influential figures.
Though his long and varied career in radio broadcasting came to an end along with the 20th Century (his last gig, as an associate producer and on-air book reviewer for the then-popular weekly public radio program "Beyond Computers," ended in the fall of 2000) he has since turned the skills he developed in radio to use in narrowcasting. He has become a leading narrator of audio books on political, economic, and historical subjects for a number of producing organizations and audio publishers, most notably Blackstone Audio, University Press Audiobooks, the Tenth Amendment Center, and Audible.com. He has also established a reputation as a podcaster. His popular "Libertarian Tradition" podcast was updated weekly on the Ludwig von Mises Institute website in 2010 and 2011 and lives on in the archives available at Mises.org and YouTube.com. His "Kranky Notions" podcast has been updated monthly on Liberty.me (and YouTube.com) since September 2014.
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He makes it stick, too. Oh, there are parts I'd have handled differently, and I wish he'd ridden a couple of _my_ favorite hobby horses (the influence of science fiction being one subject to which I wish he'd devoted more space). But I learned to live long ago with my disappointment that not everything will fit into one book.
And what _is_ in the book is pretty uniformly excellent. Riggenbach begins, for example, by locating libertarianism/anarchism in U.S. history, correctly naming e.g. Emerson, Thoreau, and some of their contemporaries as examples of this tradition. And he has a fine chapter on Ayn Rand that goes far toward explaining why hippies liked her so much better than she liked them. (He notes -- correctly, in my opinion -- that Rand never really got around to writing any serious philosophy. He treats her, though, as a brilliantly incisive essayist and polemicist, which I think is partly true but too kind by half.)
I could disagree with bits and pieces of it. (I think, for example, that Riggenbach tends to exaggerate the allegedly rightward turn Murray Rothbard took in later life.) But it's all very well done.
At any rate, Riggenbach supports his thesis well; libertarianism is indeed the hippie/counterculture legacy, at least in its political aspect. Be warned, though: since I so largely agreed with him before I read the book, I may not be a fair test of how persuasive he is.
Everyone will find their "favorite" chapters or passages, even conservatives and liberals. Probably the best one has to do with big cities [chapter 16, "The Deaths and Lives of Great American Cities], as it shows how choice is king. Given a choice among cities which are favorable to modern growth, instead of cities which fight growth, people will largely choose the "favorable" as places to spend their lives. This is far different than what most urban planning advocates preach.
Almost as good, but likely more controversial, is chapter 7, "Neither Left nor Right," an argument for the 1960s producing libertarian adults in quantity. The common view is that the 1960s created a leftist generation. His argument is well reasoned, and would cause a lively discussion in any group. In any case, any 12 people will give 15 opinions on this book, making it worthwhile to read.
But if it's true that the Baby Boomers are essentially libertarian, then their non-participation in the political process appears to be more an act of civil disobedience than the residue of apathy. Not even civil disobedience: a sort of unilateral expression of laissez-faire. "We have better things to do with our precious lives than attempt to choose the 'lesser of two evils.' We'll pass, thanks." This, in part, is what I think Riggenbach means by "decedance": if so, I'll join the chorus.
If this is true, then perhaps baby boomers have more of a "social consciousness" than they seem at first glance. For in order to be socially conscious, one must first be conscious of one's individuality; second, of the individuality of others. What's society, if not oneself living in some relation to other individuals?
As a Generation-Xer, I was left with a surprising optimism. Baby Boomers, as they age into the "senior" tranche, will become the "voting generation." As such, perhaps THEY will become the motive behind a libertarian reform, making explicit the implicit libertarianism of their youth and middle age.

