Leth reviewed Allow Me to Retort by Elie Mystal
High-tier liberal critique
3 stars
I was writing one of my book threads about this, but I must have forgotten to tag it. I finished this a while ago, so the particulars have faded, but Mystal struck me as a well-informed liberal. Which is to say that he knows enough to know that things are not working and he traces a lot of that back to constitutional history. However, he is not willing to take the next step and say that the KIND of system that was set up by the Constitution (an oligarchic republic) is not worth preserving. For each good take (delivered in a casual, irreverent style that should be the norm in the constitutional genre), there is a bizarre turn into brainworms like "voting will save us." There were also a few chapters in there towards the end where it seemed like he just wanted to rant about those topics, the theme …
I was writing one of my book threads about this, but I must have forgotten to tag it. I finished this a while ago, so the particulars have faded, but Mystal struck me as a well-informed liberal. Which is to say that he knows enough to know that things are not working and he traces a lot of that back to constitutional history. However, he is not willing to take the next step and say that the KIND of system that was set up by the Constitution (an oligarchic republic) is not worth preserving. For each good take (delivered in a casual, irreverent style that should be the norm in the constitutional genre), there is a bizarre turn into brainworms like "voting will save us." There were also a few chapters in there towards the end where it seemed like he just wanted to rant about those topics, the theme of the book be damned. And, honestly? Same.
So, for a book of liberal critique, I thought it was good enough. It's certainly diverting. As a book of answers, however, this is more of the same.
