About

The New York Times, Can Liberals Survive Progressivism?” November 24, 2021.

“Local shops are closing, neighborhoods are decaying, encampments of drug addicts have proliferated, and streets are befouled by human excrement — a set of failures Michael Shellenberger calls in his thoroughly researched and convincing new book, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, “the breakdown of civilization on America’s West Coast.” Read More

City Watch, “California Dreamin’” November 15, 2021

San Fransicko lays out in precise detail the growth of homelessness and disorder in San Francisco and other West Coast cities, and how the efforts by progressive governments—from liberal drug policies to a deliberate reduction in punishments for minor property offenses—have simply made things worse. [...]

But San Fransicko is no right-wing screed about Democratic failure. Shellenberger, a long-time environmental activist, was a socialist in his youth and worked with radicals to protest “economic globalization.” He is part of a dissident movement from withinliberal ranks that includes Bill Maher, Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan, Batya Ungar-Sargon, and many others. […]

Thus seeing in the homeless an advertisement for “social justice,” progressives are reluctant to admit that many homeless people are actually drug-addicted or mentally ill, people whose needs must be addressed by professionals. They sanction even the most demeaning behaviors, like shooting up, masturbating, or defecating in public—now considered “victimless crimes” by San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, whose main priority is not fighting crime but “deincarceration.” Read More

Washington Post, “Progressives ruined San Francisco, but at least ‘advocacy’ is thriving,” November 12, 2021

What Shellenberger calls San Francisco’s “pathological altruism” — e.g., spending $61,000 per tent for homeless campers — involves the “sacralization of victims” and abandonment of equal treatment under law. Progressive victimology preaches that behaviors that are destructive of individuals and urban civilization are definitionally caused by “systemic” this or that — racism, oppression, etc. So, progressivism strips victims of agency but also, Shellenberger says, defines them as “inherently good because they have been victimized.”[…]

California’s progressive Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco, says of his state, “The future happens here first.” His boast, like Shellenberger’s book, is a warning. Read More

Wall Street Journal, “When the Lights Go Down on the City,” October 30, 2021

“Progressive city officials in the 2020s appear determined to make all the mistakes liberal city officials made in the 1970s and ’80s, but with updated language. Michael Shellenberger’s San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities chronicles various experiments in unreality conducted by one city’s activists and political class in the 21st century. It is a bracing narrative.” Read More

O Globo [Brazil] “Boas intenções, más ideias” [Good intentions, bad ideas], October 29, 2021

“Michael Shellenberger, as Walt Whitman wrote, ‘contains multitudes’… Last year he published Apocalypse Never, a well-researched book that went against conventional wisdom… Shellenberger has attacked again. Now with San Fransicko… It is a major report about how progressives destroyed San Francisco through a series of imprudent actions…. The book is not hard-hearted… By proposing viable solutions, Shellenberger does better than other authors whose works criticize inefficient policies. [PDF]

The Economist, “A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco,” October 23, 2021

“Mr Shellenberger’s urge to tell the truth is brave… San Fransicko has the air of a spirited dinner-party conversation, as Mr Shellenberger recounts his intellectual duels with well-intentioned but wrong-headed opponents.” Read More

The Economist, “Why San Francisco’s city Government is so dysfunctional,” August 29, 2021

“As Michael Shellenberger, a journalist, writes in his forthcoming book, “San Fransicko”: “Though I have been a progressive and Democrat all of my adult life, I found myself asking a question that sounded rather conservative. What were we getting for our high taxes? And why, after 20 years of voting for ballot initiatives promising to address drug addiction, mental illness, and homelessness, had all three gotten worse?” [pdf] Read more

The New York Post, “Progressive drug laws in cities like San Francisco are killing people,” October 10, 2021

“For over a decade, the city of San Francisco has been carrying out an experiment. What happens when thousands of drug addicts are not only permitted to use heroin, fentanyl and meth publicly, but also enabled to do so? The results are in: hundreds of them die annually. Last year, 712 people in San Francisco died from drug overdoses or poisoning, and this year a similar number are on track to do so.” Read more