The passionate city that turned from 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern’s press secretary to 2020 Donald J. Trump voter for refusing the liberal establishment’s response to crime, poverty and public decency Historian Fred Siegel died Sunday. his home in Brooklyn. he was 78 years old.
His son Harry said the cause was complications from a series of infections he was hospitalized during a trip to California.
Mr. Siegel was a professor emeritus at the Cooper Alliance for the Advancement of Science and Arts in Manhattan, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Studies, a conservative think tank, and an author.
His ideological evolution is reflected in the titles of his books. “Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Geniuses of American Life” (2005), co-authored with Harry Siegel. and “Insurrection Against the Masses: How Liberalism Is Undermining the Middle Class” (2014).
Mr. Siegel was an adviser to Rudolph W. Giuliani when Mr. Giuliani was elected mayor of New York City in 1993. Giuliani has come to view Rudolph W. Giuliani as the city’s greatest mayor since Fiorello La Guardia, who served as mayor of New York City. depression. He argued that the Giuliani government had greatly reduced crime and debunked the conventional view that cities cannot be governed.
Mr. Giuliani “restored the republic with a bit of Machiavelli’s corrupt wisdom,” Siegel wrote.
As a historian, he would identify the roots of liberalism in the writings of Herbert Crowley and H.G. Wells. They envisioned college graduates as a new class of elite to lead enlightened democratic governments where European aristocracy had failed.
Despite being a disillusioned liberal, Mr. Siegel maintained his love for Brooklyn’s Ditmus Park neighborhood and left it despite being disillusioned with what he considered a selfish and progressive government in New York City. It never happened. He advocated for immigration rights and argued that Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich, who served as Speaker of the House in the late 1990s, actually claimed that Gingrich’s constituency benefited from huge federal subsidies. He mocked New York for claiming that it was dependent on Washington.
And perhaps in more grief than anger, he quoted former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, saying that his fellow Democrats “see no clear moral purpose over the attainment of practical gains.” I will reward the change,” he said.
Siegel said in an interview. city journal In 2020, John V. Lindsay, who served as mayor from 1966 to 1973, said he was “classically liberal in that intentions are more important than results, and that policy must always be done to make it work.” The trade-offs to be made were heterogeneous.” To him. “
In the same magazine in 1991Siegel argued that: “Middle-class citizens, rightly or wrongly, disagree with modern liberal city governments, largely at the expense of the middle class, who neglect the injustices of the poor and provide very poor services. I became convinced that it was aimed at paying high salaries to civil servants in order to
He was a disciple of the literary critic Irving Howe, and more or less followed his ideology before turning right.
The Transformation of Mr. Siegel — American Democratic Socialist Party Member, Progressive Policy Institute Fellow, and voted for independent John Anderson in 1980 and Democrat Walter F. Mondale in 1984 (both Voted against Republican Ronald Reagan) ) — reached its zenith in 2020 (depending on your political point of view).
After often missing presidential elections for the rest of his life or voting for losers, he voted for Mr. Trump.
In an interview, he explained why he will do so in 2020. wall street journal“You’re crushing ISIS, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, and making fun of those who claim the Palestinian issue is at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Trump said. He also said he supports Trump, who has demonstrated “ability to withstand a prolonged coup attempt by Democrats and the media” and champions “bourgeois values.”
In this week’s online memorial service, Brian C. AndersonThe editor of the City Journal said Mr. Siegel had captivated public officials in big cities, “reluctant to confront public disorder and crime for fear of violent opposition,” what he called a “riot ideology.” I wrote that I identified
“His work became central to the renaissance of American cities, particularly New York, that began in the 1990s,” Anderson writes.
Lawrence J. Mohn, former director of the Manhattan Institute, said Mr. Siegel “paved the way” by becoming a research fellow. To those left-wing Democrats who have a vision of how the world works but are disillusioned when they realize it doesn’t work. ”
“He was creating a safe haven for these people to keep them out of the cold,” Mone said.
Among the progressives Mr. Siegel did not convert was Esther R. Fuchs, a political scientist at Columbia University and an opponent of Mr. Siegel’s arguments.
“Fred was a lovely, gifted, intellectual puzzler who never stopped thinking and caring about New York City,” said Professor Fuchs. “His judgment was clouded by disappointment with the liberal establishment (they were wrong too!). I didn’t understand the working class.”
Frederick Fein Siegel was born on March 27, 1945 in the Bronx to Albert Siegel and Thelma (Fane) Siegel. His parents ran an employment agency that closed in 1978 during an 88-day newspaper strike in New York.
Fred Siegel attended Rutgers University, where he was the wrong student. He set out on a path to build his wealth, but was disappointed when Hustlepool turned out to be a dead end. He then completed his Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh.
In 1976, she married sociologist Jan Rosenberg. In addition to her son Harry, she survives with another son Jacob and four grandchildren.
Mr. Siegel taught on the campus of the State University of New York from 1973 to 1980. He studied at the Sorbonne University in Paris from 1980 to 1981. From 1982 until 2010 he was a professor of history and humanities at Cooper He Union. From 1989 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey until 1990. He was editor of the City Journal from 1990 to 1993. He was a columnist for the New York Post from 1994 to 1997. From 2011 to 2018 he was a scholar at St. He Francis He College in Brooklyn.
Harry Siegel said his father’s liberalism was shaped largely by conversations with his maternal grandfather, a garment worker and labor organizer, and that his political turn in adulthood was gradual.
Essayist Irving Kristol famously defined neoconservatives (the race he typified and popularized) as “liberals crushed by reality.” But Siegel’s conversion was not the result of a single personal experience, his son said. Even though thieves once took a bag of kosher meat worth $100 on the subway and stole several of the family’s cars.
But if Siegel came close to a philosophical epiphany, it was during the 1977 blackout. Then looters rampaged through parts of Brooklyn, stripping stores of their merchandise and setting them on fire on the night of the riot.
Siegel, whose favorite restaurant, Jack’s Pastrami King, was among those destroyed, Reflect 2017: “It turned out that the city itself had been robbed. I still can’t forget that moment 40 years ago when my political reeducation began.”