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A hand bound to a gavel.

The Question Progressives Refuse to Answer

As Democrats became the party of proceduralism, they sidestepped a crucial debate.
by Marc J. Dunkelman via The Atlantic on April 2, 2025
Herbert Spencer

The Man Who Believed in Nothing - Part II

Spencerism in America.
by Henry Snow via Another Way on March 4, 2025
Two ionic columns winding around each other

How Progressives Broke the Government

Democrats’ cultural aversion to power has cleaved an opening for Trump.
by Marc J. Dunkelman via The Atlantic on February 16, 2025
President Woodrow Wilson riding as a passenger in a two seater car with his chauffeur, George Howard.

States’ Rights or Inalienable Rights?

Some early progressives may have been advocates of states’ rights, but they misunderstood the philosophy of the American Founding.
by Samuel Postell via Law & Liberty on November 13, 2024
Cartoon of a person squished upside-down in a city high-rise.

The Death and Life of Progressive Urbanism

Blue America lacks a Gov. Ron DeSantis: someone remaking a state or major city in the image of a well-articulated ideology.
by Ross Barkan via Compact on October 2, 2024
At the filling station and garage at Pie Town, New Mexico, in October 1940. Photo by Russell Lee, FSA/Library of Congress.

Cowboy Progressives

You likely think of the American West as deeply conservative and rural. Yet history shows this politics is very new indeed.
by Daniel J. Herman via Aeon on April 8, 2022
Illustrated man with a top hat, sitting next to headstones.

The Left Side of History

Historians have been too much the ideological allies of Progressivism to permit themselves to see its master flaw.
by Allen C. Guelzo via Claremont Review of Books on May 4, 2020

AOC and the American Founding

The problem with progressive intellectuals looking to the nation's founders for progressive models.
by William Hogeland via William Hogeland blog on January 30, 2019

The New Old Democrats

It’s not the 1990s anymore. People want the government to help solve big problems. Here’s how the Democrats must respond.
by Jake Sullivan via Democracy Journal on June 20, 2018

Fighting Words

No, “liberal” and “progressive” aren’t synonyms. They have completely different histories—and the differences matter.
by Sean Wilentz via Democracy Journal on March 20, 2018

A Billionaires’ Republic

A new book argues that the Constitution’s framers believed that vast concentrations of wealth were the enemy of democracy.
by Jedediah Britton-Purdy via The Nation on July 11, 2017
Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan

American Populists Used to Run Against Tariffs. It Could Happen Again.

William Jennings Bryan stoked a worker revolt against protectionism that led to the first income tax.
by Tony Annett via Washington Post on April 9, 2025
Senator Joseph McCarthy speaking into microphones.

Newly Declassified Documents Reveal the Untold Stories of the Red Scare

In his latest book, journalist and historian Clay Risen explores how the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy upended the nation.
by Sara Georgini, Clay Risen via Smithsonian on April 1, 2025
A drawing of a variety of social movements protesting.

Peaceable Revolutions

Linda Gordon argues that social movements are vital partnerships that, by challenging the status quo, are indispensable to the health of the nation.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on March 20, 2025
Constitution mural in the Capitol rotunda.

James Madison and the Crisis of the New Order

The effort to return American government to republican principles is daunting—but the Founders’ wisdom can serve as a guide.
by Richard Samuelson via Law & Liberty on March 4, 2025
A moving truck on cinder blocks.

How Progressives Froze the American Dream

The U.S. was once the world’s most geographically mobile society. Now we’re stuck in place—and that’s a very big problem.
by Yoni Appelbaum via The Atlantic on February 10, 2025
Ken Martin and Ben Wikler at a DNC forum.

Ken Martin, Ben Wikler, and the DNC Chair Race’s Midwestern Moment

The region has unique political traditions tailor-made for the momentum gathering behind economic populism in the Democratic Party.
by Cory Haala via Clio and the Contemporary on January 31, 2025
Jimmy Carter waving and smiling at a crowd of supporters, surrounded by men in suits.

Jimmy Carter’s Improbable Road to the Presidency

The Southern president, who kept his head down following Brown v. Board of Education, would eventually declare that “the time for discrimination is over.”
by Joseph Crespino via The Nation on December 29, 2024
A large crowd of women marching in New York City for the Women's Strike for Equality in 1970.

When the Personal Was Political

Second-wave feminists meant business—but they had a lot of fun at it, too.
by Jill Filipovic via Democracy Journal on December 17, 2024
Collage of Edna Ferber, a still from the film "Giant," and symbols of Texas.

The Carpetbagger Who Saw Texas’s Future

The notion of political realignment in the Lone Star State is older than you think. It goes back to Giant, an acidic novel by Edna Ferber.
by Chris Vognar via The Atlantic on December 9, 2024
Governor Philip La Follette signing the old-age pension bill in Madison, Wisconsin in 1931.

The Golden Age of Wisconsin Socialism

At its peak in the 1920s and early ’30s, the Socialist Party in Wisconsin used confrontational tactics and nonsocialists alliances to make legislative advances.
by Joshua Kluever via Jacobin on September 12, 2024
Rep. Marcantonio in front of a mobile office trailer meeting neighborhood children.

Congressman Vito Marcantonio: A Utopian Vision for His Time and Ours

Vito Marcantonio fought racial, social, and economic injustices, promoting cross-cultural solidarity and progressive ideals amid McCarthyism and segregation.
by Sandhya Shukla via The Abusable Past on August 9, 2024
A Christian cross in an open field, with a sunset in the background.

Jesus Freaks: On the Free Spirited Evangelicals of the 1970s and 80s

Chronicling the emergence of a unique blend of counterculture and Christianity.
by Eliza Griswold via Literary Hub on August 8, 2024
Biden's hand waving goodbye as he gets into a car.

The Democrats’ Crisis Isn’t Over

Biden’s withdrawal won’t solve all of Democrats’ problems — but it gives them a chance.
by Michael Kazin via Politico Magazine on July 23, 2024
Illustration of a man typing on his laptop on a rollercoaster ride.

Work Sucks. What Could Salvage It?

New books examine the place of work in our lives—and how people throughout history have tried to change it.
by Erik Baker via The New Yorker on May 1, 2024
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1933 presidential inauguration.

The First New Deal

Planning, market coordination, and the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933.
by Sanjukta Paul via Phenomenal World on March 28, 2024
Woodrow Wilson working at his desk on May 1, 1917.

Don’t Be So Quick to Laud Woodrow Wilson

An effort is underway to restore President Wilson’s reputation as a great reformer. His best reforms were won by a mass movement, often pushing against Wilson.
by Henry Snow via Jacobin on March 14, 2024
South Pacific.

You've Got to Be Carefully Taught

Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific shows the limits–and power–of mainstream entertainment in addressing weighty social topics.
by Stephen Akey via American Purpose on March 1, 2024
William Howard Taft, with the Supreme Court building under construction in the background.

The Architect of Our Divided Supreme Court

100 years ago, Chief Justice William Howard Taft made the Court more efficient and more powerful, marking a turning point whose effects are still being felt.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on January 22, 2024

Dangers and Enemies Everywhere

How Cold War liberalism abandoned the vocabulary of hope—and how we still live with the consequences.
by George Scialabba via Democracy Journal on September 14, 2023
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