In true dialectical fashion
Michael Ledeen writes that the Left is dead. As a polemic, it is well-crafted. But does it realy make sense?
Interesting read on history, but I disagree. If anything the Left has been the cause for reduced class tensions - because only via the Left has the middle class propspered (the rise of unions, wage and labor laws, consumer protection, regulation, etc). If you hark back to the era of unrovaled dominance of eth Right, ie that of President LcKinney and Tamany Hall, you see that class hatred was entrenched and corporatism rampant. It took the Left - in the person of Teddy Roosevelt, yes, a Republican - to argue for Progressive ideals and to make it possible for the average working Joe to actually make a living without backbreaking labor and indentured servitude.
Ultimately, Ledeen's vision of what the Left actually represents ia a straw man of immense scope. But the very things he lauds America for - especially the personal liberty enjoyed by the common man - are because of struggles left of center, not in spite of them.
If there is going to be a new concensus, it needs to reject any argument which seeks to reinterpret the history of social struggle towards social justice in this country as a partisan screed. Ledeen is a dinosaur in this respect.
America had very little of the class hatred that dominated Europe for so long; American workers wanted to get rich, and believed they could. Leftist Europeans — and the bulk of the American intellectual elite — believed that only state control by a radical party could set their societies on the road to equality.
The success of America was thus a devastating blow to the Left.
Interesting read on history, but I disagree. If anything the Left has been the cause for reduced class tensions - because only via the Left has the middle class propspered (the rise of unions, wage and labor laws, consumer protection, regulation, etc). If you hark back to the era of unrovaled dominance of eth Right, ie that of President LcKinney and Tamany Hall, you see that class hatred was entrenched and corporatism rampant. It took the Left - in the person of Teddy Roosevelt, yes, a Republican - to argue for Progressive ideals and to make it possible for the average working Joe to actually make a living without backbreaking labor and indentured servitude.
Ultimately, Ledeen's vision of what the Left actually represents ia a straw man of immense scope. But the very things he lauds America for - especially the personal liberty enjoyed by the common man - are because of struggles left of center, not in spite of them.
If there is going to be a new concensus, it needs to reject any argument which seeks to reinterpret the history of social struggle towards social justice in this country as a partisan screed. Ledeen is a dinosaur in this respect.
Comments