Politics and Progress: The Emergence of American Political Science
With the gimlet eye of a surgeon, Dennis J. Mahoney exposes the ambitious origins of contemporary political "science" in the Progressive movement. Political science comes with a political agenda. We have competent studies of President Woodrow Wilson, but we can't really understand what he was about unless we know professor Woodrow Wilson's agenda. Mahoney shows convincingly how most political science education today has come to oppose the principles on which the American polity is based— limited government and its natural rights foundation. It is no wonder that the Declaration of Independence is not taken seriously by contemporary political science, whether on the left, far left, or the few conservatives in the academy. His study is simultaneously comprehensive and focused, sober and liberating. Critics of ideological bias in American higher education are merely crying in the wilderness unless they take Mahoney's arguments to heart. (Ken Masugi, Director, Center for Local Government and Senior Fellow, The Claremont Institute)