A Conservative History of the American Left
Intent upon shaping the future, American leftists have so neglected their own past that they need a conservative to recover it. So argues Flynn in justifying a decidedly unflattering investigation into progressive origins. Though those origins owe much to pre-Marxist European radicals, such as Owen and Fourier, Flynn limns a lineage of authentically American leftists, from Channing to Hoffman. In both imported and homegrown versions, however, the American Left consistently attacks three foundations of the nation’s culture: private property, the traditional family, and otherworldly religion. As these animosities ramify, they yield curiosities such as racist utopians in nineteenth-century New Harmony and bomb-making pacifists in 1960s cells. Yet the same core hostilities keep resurfacing, even in the blame-America-first position of some post-9/11 activists. From Flynn’s perspective, it is the hardening of these antipathies into political dogmas that has marginalized emancipatory leftists, who once advocated “participatory democracy,” while emboldening coercive leftists, who advance their agenda through unelected judges. Irreverent and unpredictable, Flynn’s polemical scholarship will enrage many, bore none. --Bryce Christensen