How Critical is Our Condition?: A Look at the Left and Liberals in America

I do not recall a time when the prospects for the left in America have looked quite so dim. By “the left,” I mean both the relatively small
group of intellectuals and perpetual activists who have been responsive to Marxian or at least socialist ideas and the liberals who have
led the Democratic party’s “New Deal coalition” that has been a major force in American politics since the 1930s. Three times before in
the past 30 years Republicans have won landslide presidential elections; so why, we might ask, should Reagan’s victory by a margin less impressive than that of Eisenhower twice and Nixon once be taken as evidence of an unprecedentedly grave “crisis” of the left and/or...