Podcast
American Scandal
The book discusses the American left and argues that they have been pretty much a failure, but they have had a lot of impact on the common sense of society.
Your book, American Dreamers, makes arguments about who might have won and lost battles in the culture wars. What have you found?
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The book discusses the American left and argues that they have been pretty much a failure, but they have had a lot of impact on the common sense of society.
Your book, American Dreamers, makes arguments about who might have won and lost battles in the culture wars. What have you found?
Well, this book is a history of the American left. And the American left, most historians would argue, has been pretty much a failure.
By left, I mean radical left. I mean people who call themselves socialists or sometimes communists, anarchists, left liberals, radicals is a more general term, because obviously there's been no socialist party or communist party or even labor party that's had any strength for any period of time in this country.
But my argument is that by engaging in debates about cultural values, debates about what the American dream should mean for people, how to extend it to most Americans, a lot of leftists, especially American artists, American writers, movie makers, sometimes politicians, speakers, have had a lot of impact on what you can call the common sense of society.
I mean, the very idea that, for example, the idea of same-sex marriage, now the law of the land. I mean, that was totally out of question, a radical idea up until really the 21st century. But radicals were talking about this as early as 1950s and early 1960s.