Customer Reviews

The Liberal Tradition in America

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A retired professor in the history of ideas, I have before me the 1955 first edition. I turn to this book because of the enduring question why much of the world has a love/hate relationship with the United States of America. Much of the relationship is expressed in Thomas Jefferson's rationale for the Louisana Purchase, his idea of an "empire of liberty."

The history of the United States of America is a history of flight, first from Europe, than westward from the united colonies that declared their independence on July 4, 1776, all the way to the other end of the continent and beyond.

In the pursuit of individual liberty, manny of us fail to realize that freedom is the power to act, a power that marginalizes others, giving rise to continuing flight, the marginalized as immigrant.

But what of those people who can neither flee nor transform their own governments, feudal governments in alliance with our fragile planet's only superpower? For them the absence of flight becomes fight, the terrorism that frightens us.

As we near the 50th anniversary of THE LIBERAL TRADITION OF IN AMERICA in 2005, this book becomes must reading.

Ray Stroik

The text is a bit dated; today such a single factor analysis, that the U.S. has had no serious counter Lockean political movement because we never experienced feudalism, is too simplistic to be accepted as a complete explanation. That does not mean that it is entirely off base.
Widely considered a classic.

Hartz answers the Red Scare of the 1950's with compelling observations and conclusions about America that might change the way you think of yourself and other Americans, and the political illusions we create. The writing style is rough and unattractive, but stick with it and try to figure out such concepts as liberals are really conservatives, and we've never experiened a real revolution, and why. Read Democracy in America first, or as a companion guide.