Democracy in Print
ISBN: 9780299232238
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / University of Wisconsin Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Progressivism (United States politics);

The more things change, the more the lefty political magazine the Progressive stays the same, to judge by this scintillating anthology of short articles. Ninety-odd years ago, one could find in its pages founding editor-and U.S. senator-Robert M. La Follette's denunciations of racism, imperialist war, money in politics and rapacious corporations; odes to feminism by Jane Addams and Carl Sandburg; an environmentalist elegy for the passenger pigeon by C.F. Hodge; and a jeremiad against the death penalty by Leo Tolstoy himself. These concerns (and new themes like gay rights and the perils of nuclear power) are elaborated upon in later articles by some of the leading voices of the left: Martin Luther King Jr. on the power of nonviolence; John Kenneth Galbraith on the laziness of the rich; Ralph Nader on the callousness of car companies; Noam Chomsky on media propaganda; and Molly Ivins on the absurdities of Republicans. From these pieces one gets a sense of the vigor of the left's past-see FDR's secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, attacking "big-business Fascist America"-and its perennial relevance to American life. (May 1) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Matthew Rothschild is editor of The Progressive magazine and host of Progressive Radio , a weekly public affairs program syndicated nationally. He is author of the book You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression .

hidden image for function call