Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History: Summary & Key Insights

In the years following World War II, America experienced something nearly miraculous: an economic and social consensus that, for the first time in its history, offered prosperity to the majority rather than the few. Politicians from both parties accepted that the federal government had a responsibility to ensure economic stability and social welfare. Corporations paid their workers well, unions were strong, and marginal tax rates on the wealthiest citizens were sky-high—sometimes over 90 percent. Yet business still boomed. The middle class expanded, homeownership surged, and even college education became attainable for millions.

From my vantage point, this was the high-water mark of the American experiment in shared prosperity. Corporate leaders talked not just about shareholder returns, but about their obligations to employees, communities, and the nation. The term 'stakeholder' actually meant something. There was broad bipartisan acceptance that the New Deal’s reforms—Social Security, labor rights, financial regulation—were not socialist detours but pragmatic guarantees of stability in a capitalist democracy.

What’s most remarkable in retrospect is how unquestioned this consensus seemed. Eisenhower Republicans accepted it, Kennedy Democrats expanded it, and the nation’s cultural imagination revolved around the idea that progress was collective. Yet beneath the surface, certain factions—businessmen bristling under regulation, libertarian economists resentful of government’s reach—were quietly preparing their counterrevolution. When the turbulence of the 1970s arrived, they would be ready to exploit it.

The 1970s broke the spell. Inflation surged, oil shocks rattled the economy, and the American industrial miracle stumbled under global competition. For ordinary citizens, it felt as though the old formula had stopped working. Stagnation replaced growth, trust in institutions eroded, and radical cultural liberation challenged traditional norms. Amid this chaos, the old consensus seemed not just outdated but naïve.

This was the opportunity the 'evil geniuses' had been waiting for. Corporate leaders, right-wing intellectuals, and conservative politicians coalesced around a new story about what went wrong and how to fix it. The villain, they said, was government overreach—the taxes, regulations, and unions that had supposedly strangled innovation. The solution? Free markets, individual freedom, and corporate deregulation. It sounded refreshingly bold in a time of drift. Milton Friedman and his disciples reframed economic management as a moral crusade for liberty, while political strategists like Lewis Powell urged business to fight back through media, academia, and law.

I see this period as the hinge upon which American history swung. The liberal order wasn’t defeated in open battle; it was slowly out-thought, out-communicated, and out-funded. The genius of these architects lay not in brute force but in persuasion. They made their ideology seem like common sense.