Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left

Included in National Review's “Books of 2024” ListAmerica is now reaping what the federal government has sown for decades and the Biden administration cultivated over the last four years: an unprecedented assault against America’s very foundations from an ascendant socialist Left. The United States is confronted by an encompassing ideology with an expansive agenda, extending far beyond creating yet another liberal spending program. Instead, today’s socialist Left aims to destroy traditional America and recreate us in its own imposed image of embittered hatred.Fundamentally different, these uprisings are being led by a movement heretofore notable only as a footnote, not a headline, in American politics. They are as inescapable as they are seemingly inexplicable—until now.Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left provides the first comprehensive explanation of how and why the socialist Left unleashed its fury across American society. It explains that the global examples of cause-and-effect relationships between the socialist Left and the state have been reversed in America: it is not the socialist Left that has created an enlarged government, but an enlarged government, particularly the federal government, that has elevated today’s socialist Left into a national political force.For the first time in America’s history, substantial resources are enabling the socialist Left to mount a significant and sustained threat. These resources—trillions in social spending, a seemingly infinite number of programs and regulations, and tens of millions of participants—have flowed from the federal government’s decades-long increase in size and scope. For the first time, the socialist Left, via federal programs, can deliver on what previously had only been promises to an increasing number of Americans. Unprecedented Assault maps out the course of this foundational change and the resulting anarchic destruction of traditional America that will occur if Americans do not act.With over three decades of Washington political, policy, and journalistic experience—including on Capitol Hill, the US Treasury, OMB, and corporate America—J.T. Young brings a unique perspective to an original examination of the greatest leftist uprising in America’s history: unprecedented in its virulence, breadth, and suddenness, it will not end if the socialist Left has its way. Read more