Book Alert / Visions of Progress

Visions of Progress -- The Left-Liberal Tradition in America by Doug Rossinow, UPenn Press '08, 322 pages, ISBN #0-8122-4049-9. Index, notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

Any greyhead who toiled in the political vineyards of the tumultuous '60s knows that the most highly-pitched battles weren't between liberals and conservatives but between liberals and left-wing radicals. Often, ultimate objectives were in sync but agreement broke down over how to achieve them.

As Metropolitan State University historian Doug Rossinow writes, liberals and leftists weren't always at each other's throats. In fact, they once had a common vision of a "fundamentally more democratic, just and united" future for America. "Believers in this vision -- from the settlement-house pioneer Jane Addams and the civil rights leader W.E.B. DuBois in the 1890s and after, to the founders of the ACLU in the 1920s, to Minnesota Gov. Floyd Olson and assorted labor-union radicals in the 1930s, to New Dealer Henry Wallace in the 1940s -- belonged to a left-liberal tradition in America." Together, they supplied much of the public support needed to pass progressive reforms espoused by presidents Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Truman.

"Yet, during the Cold War era of the 1950s and '60s, leftists and liberals came to view one another as enemies," Rossinow argues, "and their influential alliance all but vanished." His book is an effective way to introduce today's progressives to their historical predecessors and suggests the pitfalls of losing sight of the forest for the trees.