The Liberal Party in America

The Liberal Party in America PDF Author: Samuel Harden Church
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description

The Liberal Party in America

The Liberal Party in America PDF Author: Samuel Harden Church
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Get Book Here

Book Description


Ideas of Power

Ideas of Power PDF Author: Verlan Lewis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108476791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
This groundbreaking book presents a new understanding of ideological change. It shows how and why America's political parties have evolved.

Left in the Center

Left in the Center PDF Author: Daniel Soyer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501759884
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
Daniel Soyer's history of the Liberal Party of New York State, Left in the Center, shows the surprising relationship between Democratic Socialism and mainstream American politics. Beginning in 1944 and lasting until 2002, the Liberal Party offered voters an ideological seal of approval and played the role of strategic kingmaker in the electoral politics of New York State. The party helped elect presidents, governors, senators, and mayors, and its platform reflected its founders' social democratic principles. In practical politics, the Liberal Party's power resided in its capacity to steer votes to preferred Democrats or Republicans with a reasonable chance of victory. This uneasy balance between principle and pragmatism, which ultimately proved impossible to maintain, is at the heart of the dramatic political story presented in Left in the Center. The Liberal Party, the longest-lived of New York's small parties, began as a means for anti-Communist social democrats to have an impact on the politics and policy of New York City, Albany, and Washington, DC. It provided a political voice for labor activists, independent liberals, and pragmatic social democrats. Although the party devolved into what some saw as a cynical patronage machine, it remained a model for third-party power and for New York's influential Conservative and, later, the Working Families parties. With an active period ranging from the successful senatorial career of Jacob Javits to the mayoralties of John Lindsay and Rudy Giuliani, the Liberal Party effectively shaped the politics and policy of New York. The practical gains and political cost of that complicated trade-off is at the heart of Left in the Center.

Listen, Liberal

Listen, Liberal PDF Author: Thomas Frank
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1627795405
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of What's the Matter With Kansas, a scathing look at the standard-bearers of liberal politics -- a book that asks: what's the matter with Democrats? It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming. With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, Frank's Listen, Liberal lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years. A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality. In this critical election year, Frank recalls the Democrats to their historic goals-the only way to reverse the ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor in America.

The Strange Death of Liberal America

The Strange Death of Liberal America PDF Author: Ralph Brauer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313080976
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Ralph Brauer defines Liberal America as a place where government exists to keep the playing field level. The success of the American experiment, he argues, depends on how well we maintain this equity and its four cornerstones: economic justice, educational equity, voting rights, and media fairness. His book is both a political and intellectual history examining the various threats to these cornerstones, and a social and cultural chronicle. Touching on music, television, movies, and sports, Brauer's thesis is underscored by a historical discussion that begins with the New Deal and works its way to the present, ending with Global Warming and the Iraq War. Arguing that the patient is in intensive care, Brauer identifies three reasons for the decline of the level playing field: 1) a Republican counterrevolution dedicated to rolling back the values of the New Deal, 2) an inability of both parties to answer questions raised by decades of Civil Rights revolutions, and 3) the transformation of suburban America from a place of opportunity created by government programs to a battleground. These three ideas form the basis for the book's three sections. Part One follows the development of the Counterrevolutionary Coalition, beginning with the Southern Strategy and ending with a chapter on America's politicized media. Part Two focuses on questions that have been raised by people of color and by women, and treats the Democratic Party's failure to answer those questions as illustrated by events like the Nader-LaDuke campaign and the 1964 Atlantic City convention. Part Three details the impact of suburban America on the cornerstones.

The Essential America

The Essential America PDF Author: George McGovern
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743270789
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Liberalism is the oldest and most enduring American tradition, a philosophy and way of life we inherited from the Founding Fathers. This is the central idea of The Essential America by George McGovern, America's best-known (and most consistent) liberal. Referring us to our moral and spiritual foundations, McGovern not only presents a resounding defense of liberalism as "the most practical and hopeful compass to guide the American ship of state" but offers specific proposals for keeping the tradition vibrant. The Essential America proposes programs for feeding the world's malnourished children. Rather than sending our armies abroad, McGovern spells out policies that confront the causes of terrorism. He proposes cutting our military budget (echoing Dwight D. Eisenhower's powerful warning about the military-industrial complex). He condemns preemptive war, criticizes tax cuts for the rich, and warns against government for the powerful minority. Americans have traditionally stood for progress, generosity, tolerance, and protection of the needy, McGovern states -- as well as for multi- lateralism in foreign policy and "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." He reminds us that while creative tension between liberalism and conservatism is the genius of American politics, it is the liberals who have been responsible for every forward step in our national history. They built "the Essential America."

Wake Up, You're Liberal!

Wake Up, You're Liberal! PDF Author: Ted Rall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781932360226
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Americans are not living as well as the citizens of the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation should. Part of the reason: their government has been hijacked by the right third of the political spectrum. Why? After all, the American left — Democrats, Greens and political movements from environmentalism and animal rights to those who oppose unfettered free trade — should by all rights enjoy majority, mainstream status. Eighty percent of Americans are "regular people," people who make less than $100,000 a year. A plurality of registered voters are Democrats. Despite this seemingly intrinsic advantage, there hasn't been a "real" Democrat in the White House since Lyndon Johnson. But Democrats, as Will Rogers famously observed, don't belong to an organized political party—right-wingers from Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler have always been better at getting things done. The GOP has talk radio, Fox News and Clear Channel Communications on its side. The obvious solution to the current crisis of power is the reconstitution of a strong, viable American left centered around an effective Democratic Party.This book is dedicated to the prospect that the left will, and must, rise again.

Bamboozled

Bamboozled PDF Author: Angela McGlowan
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 141856768X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Which political party gave rise to the Ku Klux Klan? Which political party opposed extending the vote to women? Which political party attempted to filibuster and kill the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Which political party in 2007 tapped as President Pro Tempore of the Senate a former Klansman? (Hint: It wasn't the Republicans.) Bamboozled demolishes once and for all the lies Liberals use to manipulate and exploit Latinos, women, and blacks. Based on a mountain of research and personal interviews with top leaders and insiders, McGlowan dismantles Democrat deceptions and exposes Liberal lies, including: How the Democratic Party erased its racist past and created an illusion of inclusion on Civil Rights The scheme Liberals ran to con minorities into loyally supporting a political party that despises their most deeply felt values Why what's bad for families is great for Liberals How Liberals' love affair with criminal leniency destroys the very communities Liberals claim to protect How Liberal economic policies bankrupt blacks, loot Latinos, and wreck women's wallets Unveiling the Left's racist past and exploitative present, McGlowan points all Americans toward a bamboozle-free future.

Fortunes of Change

Fortunes of Change PDF Author: David Callahan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470606541
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Packed with fascinating data that paints a provocative picture of the new rich In Fortunes of Change, David Callahan contends that something big is happening among the rich in America: they’re drifting to the left. When Callahan set out to write a book on the new upper class, he expected to profile a greedy and reactionary elite—the robber barons of a second Gilded Age. Instead, he discovered something else. While many of the rich still back a GOP that stands against taxes and regulation, liberalism is spreading fast among the wealthy. In Fortunes of Change, we meet an upper class increasingly filled with super-educated professionals and entrepreneurs who work in “knowledge” industries and live in the bluest parts of America. This cosmopolitan elite takes for granted such key liberal ideas as multiculturalism and active government, and have ever less in common with an extremist GOP based in small-town America and dominated by Tea Party activists and the likes of Sarah Palin. Fortunes of Change explores: Why some of America’s wealthiest people backed Barack Obama’s presidential bid and are pouring record sums into the Democratic Party and liberal organizations, even though they stand to see their taxes go up. How a few big donors have spent millions to create the modern gay rights movement and how environmental activists have tapped a river of new liberal cash. Why Hollywood, rolling in new profits thanks to globalization, has more money than ever to back Democratic candidates and push politics to the left. Why Silicon Valley is turning more liberal and how tech money—including Bill Gates’s vast fortune—is funding a growing array of liberal groups and politicians. How the upper class is likely to get more liberal as young heirs are inculcated with liberal ideas in America’s most elite prep schools and universities. David Callahan is a co-founder of the think tank Demos, where he is now a senior fellow. He is author of the Cheating Culture, among other books, and his articles have appeared in such places as USA Today, the New York Times, the Nation, and the Washington Monthly. Packed with surprising facts and behind-the-scene stories, Fortunes of Change is a must-read book if want to understand how America's politics and culture are changing—and what the future may hold.

Don't Blame Us

Don't Blame Us PDF Author: Lily Geismer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069117623X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Don't Blame Us traces the reorientation of modern liberalism and the Democratic Party away from their roots in labor union halls of northern cities to white-collar professionals in postindustrial high-tech suburbs, and casts new light on the importance of suburban liberalism in modern American political culture. Focusing on the suburbs along the high-tech corridor of Route 128 around Boston, Lily Geismer challenges conventional scholarly assessments of Massachusetts exceptionalism, the decline of liberalism, and suburban politics in the wake of the rise of the New Right and the Reagan Revolution in the 1970s and 1980s. Although only a small portion of the population, knowledge professionals in Massachusetts and elsewhere have come to wield tremendous political leverage and power. By probing the possibilities and limitations of these suburban liberals, this rich and nuanced account shows that—far from being an exception to national trends—the suburbs of Massachusetts offer a model for understanding national political realignment and suburban politics in the second half of the twentieth century.