Fiorello LaGuardia is known best as the tempestuous mayor of New York City in the days when Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat in the White House. There had been, however, an earlier time, which matched his mayoralty years in sheer drama and perhaps surpassed them in lasting achievement-LaGuardia's years in Congress. He served in the House of Representative almost continuously from 1917 to 1933, representing two ethnically diverse congressional districts: the Fourteenth (Greenwich Village), from 1917 to 1919, and the Twentieth (East Harlem), from 1923 to 1933. Although barred from important committee posts because of his political independence and thus denied from playing a direct role in lawmaking, he was a tireless and vocal champion of Progressive causes, from allowing more immigration and removing U.S. troops from Nicaragua to speaking up for the rights and livelihoods of striking miners, impoverished farmers, oppressed minorities, and struggling families. A goad to the era's plutocrats and their enablers in government, LaGuardia fought for progressive income taxes, greater government oversight of Wall Street, and national employment insurance for workers idled by the Great Depression. In this book, first published by Cornell University Press in 1959, Howard Zinn establishes LaGuardia's tenure in Congress as a vital link between the Progressive and New Deal eras, offering a lively and informative account of his many legislative battles, his political philosophy, and the distinctly urban (specifically, New York City) sensibilities he brought to the Progressive movement.

This Book, A Classic By One Of The Outstanding Political Scientists Of The Twentieth Century Seeks To Take Account Of The Factors Through Which Liberalism, The Guiding Doctrine Of Western Civilization Emerged As A New Ideology To Meet The Needs Of A New World In Which Status Was Replaced By Contract As The Judicial Foundation Of Society, Science Began To Replace Religion As The Controlling Factor In Giving Shape To The Ideas Of Humanity.Liberalism Was Synonymous Of Freedom Since It Emerged As The Foe Of Privilege Conferred By Virtue Of Birth Or Creed. However, The Freedom It Sought Had No Universality, Since Its Practice Was Limited To Men Who Had Property To Defend. Liberalism Tried To Discover A System Of Fundamental Rights, Which The State Is Not Entitled To Invade; However, It Turned Out To Be More Urgent And More Ingenious In Exerting Them To Defend The Interests Of Property Than To Protect The Interest Of Propertyless. As Soon As It Sought To Effect Fundamental Transformation Of Institutions Whose Habits It Was Supposed To Inform, It Found That It Was The Prisoner Of The End, It Was Destined To Serve. Soon The Liberal Spirit Was Vandalized And What Ensued Was War And Devastation, Ironically In The Name Of Saving That Very Spirit.Although Written In 1936, This Work Appears Equally Relevant Today As It Helps To Understand The Difficulties Of Our Time.

In 1979, Christopher Lasch published the epochal The Culture of Narcissism warning of the normalizing of narcissism in our society. Lasch may have understated it. 35 years later, in the Obama era with its parade of endless, often inexplicable, scandals we have a full blown epidemic of what has recently been called Moral Narcissism. Forget Narcissus and his reflection, Moral Narcissism the almost schizophrenic divide between intentions and results now pervading our culture is the new method for feeling good about yourself. It no longer matters how anything turns out as long as your intentions were good, that you were moral. And, just as importantly, the only determinant of those intentions, the only one who defines that morality, is you. I Know Best goes beyond Lasch to lay bare how this moral narcissism is behind all those scandals from Obamacare to the Veteran's Administration to the IRS, Benghazi, Bergdahl, Syria and beyond. Everything the Obama administration did and does was about making them feel good about themselves, the results be damned. And they have as their allies those supreme moral narcissists in the academy, media and Hollywood, ever willing to ratify those good intentions and ignore those same results. But I Know Best is not just about the Left. Moral Narcissism affects the right as well, even when they don't realize it. It is a true epidemic that must be cured in order to save our democratic republic and our futures.

Varieties of Progressivism in America focuses on the debates within the party of progress about how best to increase opportunity in America and to make social and political life more egalitarian. The contributors to this volume offer different expertise and varying perspectives as they examine the Old Democrats of the New Deal, the contributions of the Clinton-era New Democrats, and the future of progressivism in America.

Record numbers of Americans describe themselves as “independents” and reject the conventional agendas of Left and Right. In this widely acclaimed book, Ted Halstead and Michael Lind explain why today’s ideologies and institutions are so ill-suited to the Information Age, and offer a groundbreaking blueprint for updating all sectors of America society. Taking on partisans and experts on both sides of the political divide, they propose far-reaching reforms for the way we provide health and retirement security, collect taxes, organize elections, enforce civil rights, and educate our children. Twice before the United States has dramatically reconfigured itself, shifting from an agrarian to an industrial society after the Civil War and successfully adapting to the massive technological and demographic changes of the early twentieth century during the New Deal era. Uniting a sweeping historical vision with bold policy proposals, The Radical Center shows us how to reinvent our nation once again so that all Americans can reap the benefits of the Information Age.

2009 Reprint of original 1956 edition. Paperback, 114pp. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of classical liberalism and is seen as one of the leaders of the Austrian School of economics. Mises introduced praxeology as a more general conceptual foundation of the social sciences and established that economic laws were only arrived at through the means of methodological individualism firmly rejecting positivism and materialism as a foundation for the social sciences. Many of his works were on two related economic themes:1. Monetary economics and inflation; 2. The differences between government controlled economies and free trade.

Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research recounts the strategies used by the country's top economic policymakers to conceal their failure to recognize the housing bubble or take steps to rein it in before it grew to unprecedented levels, resulting in the loss of millions of jobs, homes, and the life savings of tens o...

An acclaimed journalist and novelist explores the legacy and future of American liberalism through the history of his family's politically active history George Packer's maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, was a populist congressman from Alabama in the early part of the century—an agrarian liberal in the Jacksonian mold who opposed the New Deal. Packer's father was a Kennedy-era liberal, a law professor and dean at Stanford whose convictions were sorely—and ultimately fatally—tested in the campus upheavals of the 1960s. The inheritor of two sometimes conflicting strains of the great American liberal tradition, Packer discusses the testing of ideals in the lives of his father and grandfather and his own struggle to understand the place of the progressive tradition in our currently polarized political climate. Searching, engrossing, and persuasive, Blood of the Liberals is an original, intimate examination of the meaning of politics in American lives.

Spanning nearly one hundred years of American political history, and abounding with outsize characters—from Lindbergh to Goldwater to Gingrich to Abramoff— White Protestant Nation offers a penetrating look at the origins, evolution, and triumph (at times) of modern conservatism. Lichtman is both a professor of political history at American University and a veteran journalist, and after ten years of prodigious research, he has produced what may be the definitive history of the modern conservative movement in America. He brings to life a gallery of dynamic right-wing personalities, from luminaries such as Strom Thurmond, Phyllis Schlafly, and Bill Kristol to indispensable inside operators like financiers Frank Gannett and J. Howard Pew. He explodes the conventional wisdom that modern conservative politics began with Goldwater and instead traces the roots of today's movement to the 1920s. And he lays bare the tactics that conservatives have used for generations to put their slant on policy and culture; to choke the growth of the liberal state; and to build the most powerful media, fundraising, and intellectual network in the history of representative government. White Protestant Nation is entertaining, provocative, enlightening, and essential reading for anyone who cares about modern American politics and its history.

A confrontation and critique edited by Irving Howe with essays by Michael Harrington, Paul Goodman, Eugene Genovese, Robert Brustein, Theodore Draper, Lewis Coser, and many others.

Drawing on the riches of the Western tradition, Anthony T. Kronman defends a humane conservativism for our enlightened age "Rigorous and philosophically demanding, Kronman's book invites principled argument from every side."-- Kirkus Reviews As the party of the left has grown more strident, its conservative critics have responded in kind. Each year conservatives do a poorer job of defending their position as a citadel of human values without lapsing into an angry assault on ideals that they and progressives share. It becomes harder to see the enduring appeal of a true conservatism that celebrates the worth of custom and inheritance; the splendor of what is excellent and rare; the expansive solidarity of our friendship with the dead; and the dignity, indeed necessity, of our longing for a connection to the eternal and divine--while affirming that these timeless human goods are compatible with the modern ideals of equality, toleration, and reasoned argument. In this bracing book, Anthony Kronman defends a conservative philosophy of life that respects our enlightened ideals but decries the damage their arrogant simplification causes in our moral, political, and spiritual lives. Drawing on the work of Aristotle, Cicero, Spinoza, Burke, Hume, Madison, Tocqueville, Lincoln, Arendt, Heidegger, and others, he argues that humanism is conservatism, today as in the past. He reminds us that our humbling parameters make possible every form of human greatness, every human glory, every human love worthy of the name.

Praised by President Richard Nixon as his favorite read for 1987, The Search for Historical Meaning presents the postwar American conservative movement against a background of ideas with which it has only rarely been identified. This important book--updated with a new preface--examines the influence of Hegelian concepts on the historical attitudes and cultural judgments of prominent postwar conservatives who, because of their concern with personal freedom as a political and ontological value, denounced Hegel while ascribing their own Hegelian ideas to less offensive sources. Gottfried argues that the lack of a true historical perspective was a serious defect in the postwar American conservative movement, and it grew worse in the years that followed. Essential reading for conservative thinkers, political philosophers, and American political historians, The Search for Historical Meaning concludes with an incisive examination of the American conservative movement that has implications for today.

The divisions running through the history of the socialist movement between reformists and revolutionaries, authoritarians and democrats, putschists and gradualists-the divisions and disputes which have provided the categories in terms of which the history of the movement has been written-are secondary. The important distinction is between those socialists who looked for some outside authority which would hand down salvation to the grateful masses from above and those who saw the key to the reform of existing society in the struggle from below for self-emancipation. Behind the question: "What do we mean by socialism?" lies a more important question. What do we mean by democracy?

The first comprehensive dictionary of American Conservatism contains more than 1,500 entries of people, events, organizations and issues of conservatism, both past and present.

First published in 1975, Prophets on the Right examines the views of five conservative critics of American foreign policy from the 1930s to the Cold War era. This new edition contains an introduction in which the author explains how his recent political reorientation, from left to right, has affected his interpretation of the views of the "prophets."

""Film in the Battle of Ideas"" is a book written by John Howard Lawson, a screenwriter and member of the Hollywood Ten who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. The book explores the role of film in shaping public opinion and political ideology, particularly in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Lawson argues that film is a powerful tool for propaganda and that Hollywood has the ability to shape public opinion and influence political discourse. He examines the ways in which films have been used to promote various political ideologies, including fascism, communism, and capitalism, and argues that filmmakers have a responsibility to use their medium for the greater good. The book also delves into the political and cultural climate of Hollywood during the time period, including the effects of the Hays Code and the Red Scare. Overall, ""Film in the Battle of Ideas"" is an insightful and thought-provoking analysis of the intersection between film and politics.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Thumb through the index of almost any study of the Thatcher years -- biographical, scholarly or journalistic -- and you will come across the name of Sir Alfred Sherman. In her memoirs Lady Thatcher herself pays tribute to Sherman's 'brilliance', the 'force and clarity of his mind', his 'breadth of reading and his skills as a ruthless polemicist'. She credits him with a central role in her achievements, especially as Leader of the Opposition but also after she became Prime Minister. Born in 1919 in London's East End, until 1948 Sherman was a Communist and fought in the Spanish Civil War. But he ended up an indefatigable free-market crusader. The book describes his early relationship with Sir Keith Joseph and his own role in the formation of the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974. Sherman examines the origins and development of 'Thatcherism', but concludes that the Conservative administrations of the 1980s were, for the most part, an 'interlude' and that the post-war consensus remains largely unscathed -- 'we are back to where we started'.