Still, he believed that “at a time when other ideologies are greeted with apathy, populism has the capacity to generate real enthusiasm.” The principal figures of this book would agree. Like Lasch, they wanted to recover a “submerged tradition” that was an alternative to Enlightenment liberalism, although the populism they envisioned and helped to create looked different from Lasch’s idealized picture. And, as we shall see, they thought the enthusiasm populism could generate was because of, not despite, all those “other evils.”
