Progressives

Could Alabama bring back the whipping post or brand the skin of a thief with a scarlet T, and not run afoul of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment? Such a proposition may seem outlandish, but it is what opinions signed last week by Justices Antonin Scalia...

Seventy-six years ago, to many ears on the left, Franklin D. Roosevelt sounded way too much like a centrist. True, he was eloquent, and he'd generated enthusiasm in a Democratic base eager to evict Republicans from the White House. But his campaign was moderate -- with policy proposals that...

Not all PACs deserve a bad name. Here at Yale University, a student run political action committee in its second electoral cycle is actually trying to expand grassroots field operations, unlike many of its corporate brethren. Students for a New American Politics PAC, founded in 2005 by students in the...

Cross-Posted at OpenLeft.com

Barack Obama's New Hampshire concession speech became one of the most important moments in this campaign. The speech was made into that powerful "yes we can" video and was downloaded and commented on a ton. What has been less commented on, but something which I think...

With William F. Buckley's passing yesterday, perhaps the time has come for progressives to stop fearing him and learn from him. Not from his ideas, of course, but from his tactics.

Buckley came of age in an America guided by a liberal consensus. Rather than trim his sails...

Back in 2004, I wrote an essay predicting "the progressive populist moment" was at hand. Katrina vanden Heuvel disagreed. It turns out I was premature. In this year's Democratic primary, the activists and rank-and-file of the Democratic Party have been the magnet pulling the candidates towards a common platform of...

Religion, for better or for worse, has been politicized in blatant ways that have seldom been equaled in American elections. Evangelical Christians, who once were a ridiculed irrelevant sectarian movement, have, over just three decades, become a powerful voting bloc that can no longer be ignored. It is a tribute...

In 1964, it was considered a virtue to be a liberal. FDR's legacy was strong. Liberals brought us victory in World War II, social security, voting rights for African-Americans, a tough stance against Communism, and Camelot. On the big issues, the liberal agenda was dominant.

But the divisive Vietnam...

The best people to talk about politics with are comics. They're humble folk because they make a living wowing herds of fat, drunk tourists with jokes that cross all social, racial, and gender boundaries. Ergo, they don't try to throw big words around like so many Ph.D.-carriers, which really is...

As a girl growing up on a farm in the 1970s, I was a bit different from my girlfriends.

From a relatively early age, I was addicted to the politics of the nation over those of high school. Instead of watching Happy Days, I was glued to the Watergate...

"I think we're not looking sufficiently at what is happening at the grassroots in the country. We have not emphasized sufficiently the cultural revolution that we have to make among ourselves in order to force the government to do differently. Things do not start with governments."

-Grace Lee Boggs

When...