The Radical Left—Always a Bridesmaid

[DonViejo]

Michael Kazin

Radical leftists never take control in the halls of American power, but as a new history demonstrates, they have still wrought genuine social change over the last half-century.

One virtue of the crowded, often compelling narrative in Radicals in American: The U.S. Left Since the Second World War is that it makes Bernie Sanders appear to be one of the more sensible, as well as most consistent, leftists in America.

As historians who yearn for a bigger and stronger radical movement, authors Howard Brick and Christopher Phelps want to separate the good left with its emancipating, altruistic ideas from the bad left that glories in self-destructive and sometimes lunatic rhetoric and behavior.

Born in 1941, Sanders got “radicalized” at the University of Chicago. He then spent much of the ’60s fighting to integrate neighborhoods and schools and trying to emulate such social-democratic, pro-union icons as Michael Harrington and Martin Luther King Jr. instead of utopian tyrants like Mao Tse-tung and would-be urban guerillas like Eldridge Cleaver. During the annus mirabilis of 1968, he moved to Vermont, which was fast becoming a mecca for back-to-the-land lefties. There, he organized an anti-corporate third party and began running, quite successfully, for political office—mayor of Burlington, a seat in the House, and then one in the Senate.

Today, when Sanders addresses throngs of admirers all over America and gets interviewed on national TV, his message is much the same as he delivered to small-town New Englanders almost 35 years ago. “If we wanted to, we could wipe out economic hardship almost overnight,” he told a Vermont paper back in 1971. “We could have free medical care, excellent schools, and decent housing for all. The problem is that the great wealth and potential of this country rests with a handful of people …”

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/08/the-radical-left-always-a-bridesmaid.html

[Doctor_J]

1. clean air and water, living wage, affordable housing and education, healthcare - "radical"

Rec

[RufusTFirefly]

2. Equating Bernie with the radical left is like calling PBO a socialist

The acceptable political continuum is this country is so pathetically narrow that most Americans haven't a clue as to the true range of views. With apologies to Dorothy Parker, when it comes to politics in this country, we run the gamut from A to B.

[The River]

3. Well Said

There is no radical left in the U.S.
The "liberal" left in the U.S. would barely
be considered centrist in most of Europe.

Europe has had a thousand+ years to figure out what kind of government
works best. They've tried everything from kings and dictators to war lords
and zealots. They've discovered that some form of Social Democracy with
a well regulated capitalist economy works best.

[appalachiablue]

4. +1

[dreamnightwind]

6. self-delete, wrong place

[Indepatriot]

5. +5,000,000

[dreamnightwind]

7. + another

Also they pretty much have parliamentary governments where minority parties win representation, unlike our two party winner-takes-all. This allows for more diversity, and it's more difficult for the powers that be to seal everything off when they have to worry about more than just buying out two parties.