Undoing a Century of Reform: The Great Reversal in American Politics

I As recent events demonstrate so dramatically, the spirit of democracy, the universal impulse to self-government and equality, lives on and thrives, generating mass uprisings against autocratic domination, even in areas where democracy has heretofore had little purchase. However, the reach of global capitalism and the burgeoning debt crisis impose overwhelming constraints and an essentially…

The American welfare state, at least in the form that we’ve known it since the New Deal, is under siege. Tax phobic voters, Tea Party governors, deficit “hawks” – all are trying to tear it down. All repeat the same mantra: “we” can no longer afford “out-of-control” entitlements spending. Worse, few Democrats seem willing to…

Race casts a long shadow in the United States. Since the founding of the republic, race has been built into the structure of American society, often explicitly but more often in subtle, invisible ways.  Race, as I use the term here, is a social category created by the relegation of certain people to an inferior…

At the end of World War II and during the Great Depression, the United States Congress and President transformed and improved the lives of American workers who were too old to work — either because they couldn’t or employers wouldn’t hire them — by passing the Social Security and Old Age Assistance programs and legally…

Why has support for progressive politics seemingly collapsed? While there are clearly many reasons, this essay focuses on the role commercial culture plays in the production of anti-progressive, anti-republican values. Using the “Real Housewives” franchise as an example, I argue that trash television shows undermine the possibility of collective action and government for the common…

“When the official subject is presidential politics, taxes, welfare, crime, rights, or values . . . the real subject is RACE.” So read the cover story for the May 1991 issue of The Atlantic.[i] The authors, Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, trumpeted their message with deafening clarity. Their title conveyed the extent that…

More often than not, hopes are difficult to recognize in the realities they sediment. The ‘invisible hand’ of the market operated by selfish individuals in search of their own wealth and pleasure seemed to be rather reluctant or impotent to save humans from the horrors of reciprocal cruelties; most certainly, it managed neither to liberate…