How One Left-wing Professor, Peter Dreier, sees America’s Heroes- and Reveals His Own Ignorance
The Nation magazine is playing a trick on me. I regularly receive a lot of books, since publishers know I review many and they’re hoping I’ll respond by writing up the one they are pushing. Many are conservative books; others histories; others simply by publishers who know I’ve written on a topic that their new book covers.
But until now, Nation Books, an imprint of the Perseus Book Group, has never sent me one of the books by any of their left-wing authors. But two days ago, I received a copy of Peter Dreier’s new book, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame. Dreier is the E. P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College, and happens to be one of the main characters of Stanley Kurtz’s new book on Obama’s radical redistributionist plans for a second term (he has an entire section).
I know why I received the book. Dreier, a man I have met personally and who is a good friend of a good friend of mine, sent me a nasty e-mail a few years ago. He went bananas after I wrote one of my critical articles about Pete Seeger (one of his heroes in the new book) and told me that not only was I one of the worst people on earth, but that he knew that the only thing that got me up in the morning was the desire to drive to Wal-Mart, shop there, and hence oppress the poor. I responded to him that he should complain to his other great hero, Bruce Springsteen, since just that week the singer had announced that his new CD would be exclusively sold at Wal-Mart! I then got in my car and, to make myself feel good, drove to Wal-Mart and did some grocery shopping.
So the reason I got the book — I know how publishers and their publicity departments work — is that Dreier asked them to mail it to me. Expecting me to take the bait and attack the book, he could then come up with a line for an ad: “The reactionary right-wing writer Ron Radosh hates this book, so you know it has to be good,” or something along those lines. So, indeed, I accept the challenge, and henceforth will make some serious observations about what Dreier has written.
If Dreier were honest, his title would have been “A Bestiary of American Vermin.”
”for anyone “who challenged prevailing ideas and inspired Americans to believe that a better society was possible,” and for politicians who “gave voice to social justice movements in the corridors of power” and wrote laws “that changed society.”
For anyone “who challenged”? Since progressivism is an international movement rooted in Europe… Oh no… What the hell, I’ll go there… Adolf Hitler.
I recently saw the movie “Hitler’s secretary” (or something like that). It was a documentary interview in the 1990s of a woman, who was very young at the time, and through serendipity ended up being one of Hitler’s secretarial pool in the bunker. She remarked to Hitler once about the rumors of death camps, and Der Fuhrer responded with something to the effect that she shouldn’t worry about such things, because people who understand are building a better Europe.
Basically, what Hitler said was a variation on Lenin’s “you have to break some eggs to make an omelette”. Show me a monster at any time in history, and I’ll show you somebody trying to perfect society.
” Lenin’s “you have to break some eggs to make an omelette”. ”
Actually that was Walter Duranty’s (American leftist journalist) defense of Stalin’s (I believe) own Holocaust of the Ukrainians.
So nu? If a cat could write a book about the greatest Americans EVER, it would be full of cats. Who wouldn’t expect a communist’s book be full of communists?
+1
For all the nudging and pushing ahead energies exercised toward implimenting of the socialist and communist ideals these days, how does today compare to the days of 1950′s when we thought we saw an intrusion of such thinking into the American fabric? Today you don’t need reading glasses to see what was a half century ago only suspected.
Joseph Randolph, author of Debilitating Democracy
I have been struck lately by the “coolness” of the British Left, none more obvious than in a 2003 biography of war correspondent and uber-liberal Martha Gellhorn. I wrote about Caroline Moorehead’s deformed biography here:http://clarespark.com/2012/08/06/gellhorns-blind-spot-on-israel/. In Britain, at least, it appears that Maoism or post-colonialism is more prevalent than anything resembling the Old Left, and they may see it as irrelevant whether or not Madame X, Y, or Z was a Communist or not.
Bravo Ron, it is clear that the left, dominant in the academy, is intent on airbrushing history. You raise an important voice setting the record straight.
Thanks to Ron for taking my book seriously. Everyone I profile in the book — The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century — contributed to making America a better society. In the introduction I point out that they were “heroes but not saints.” I don’t agree with everything they said or did.
Teddy Roosevelt was an imperialist and something of a racist, but he was also an early environmentalist and pro labor. Thanks to the pioneering Meat Inspection Act — which TR supported after socialist Upton Sinclair’s book THE JUNGLE raised awareness of the awful conditions in slaughterhouses — our food is safer. Ron says that the book has two presidents, but it has three; he omits Lyndon Johnson. He was wrong on Vietnam and other foreign policy issues, but his support for the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, and the war on poverty merits his inclusion in the book. I don’t forgive Alice Paul’s anti-semitism, but I admire her remarkable work on behalf of women’s suffrage. I don’t agree with Margaret Sanger’s support for eugenics, but her courageous advocacy of women’s reproductive freedom was a blow for human rights.
Ron asks why I didn’t include “businessmen, entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers and other Americans who were not defined by their politics?” The book does include scientists (Albert Einstein, Henry Wallace, Rachel Carson), and businessmen (Tom Johnson, Wallace), as well as athletes, musicians, Supreme Court justices, organizers, social workers, playwrights, theologians, academics, and others. I also admire entrepreneurs like Julius Rosenwald and Edward Filene who devoted their energies and fortunes to social philanthropy, a proud American tradition.
Because the book defines “greatest” as those who helped made the U.S. a more humane and democratic society, it is inherently about politics.
Ron says “all his entries are pro-Communist.” Ron knows this is wrong. Quite a few were strongly anti-Communist, including Walter Reuther, Bayard Rustin, Allard Lowenstein, and Michael Harrington, and of course Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Most of the people I profile in the book were not involved with Communists one way or another, including Louis Brandeis, Jane Addams, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, John Kenneth Galbraith, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Cesar Chavez, Billie Jean King, and Thurgood Marshall.
Some of the 100 people in my book were liberals and reformers, some were progressives, some were radicals and revolutionaries. Some were Socialists.
Ron looks at 20th Century America through the lens of whether someone was or wasn’t in (or sympathetic to) the Communist Party. Of the 100 people in the book, a small handful — including Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Harry Hay, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Betty Friedan, and others — were either in the CP or its front groups dealing with labor, women’s rights, and civil rights issues. I look at their overall contributions to society, which were incredibly positive. They are lifelong reformers and radicals. They are not defined simply by the few months, or even the few years, they were involved with the CP and its orbit.
Ron’s is simply wrong about my take on Bayard Rustin. From his work with King on the Montgomery bus boycott (1955) to his work with Randolph on the March on Washington (1963), Rustin was not a public figure, as his biographer, John D’Emilio discusses at great length. His most important contributions to the civil rights movement were mostly behind-the-scenes, because King and others considered his homosexuality and radical affiliations a liability.
Finally, Ron also makes a serious error in relying on Stanley Kurtz’s book about Obama to learn anything about me. The book mentions me in a few places as having some influence on Obama’s political views. I am hardly one of the “main characters” in the book, as Ron suggests. More importantly, Kurtz has no evidence of my having any influence — directly or indirectly — on Obama. I’ve never met Obama. I have no idea whether Obama ever read anything I wrote or ever heard me speak. Neither does Kurtz, which is why he uses words like “probably” and “possibly” to describe a relationship that never existed. Kurtz’s book is not history or biography; it is conjecture and paranoid conspiracy theory. Ron is misguided to rely on it.
My book is about the great figures of America’s liberal and progressive movements — women’s rights, labor, civil rights, environmentalism, peace, human rights, gay rights — and the many ways they’ve made America a better country. From women’s suffrage to workplace safety, from Social Security to the Civil Rights Act, from the progressive income tax to the minimum wage, from the Environmental Protection Act to laws requiring seat belts and nutrition information, they helped transform ideas that were considered radical to taken-for-granted common sense. We all stand on their shoulders.
i’m sorry but you didnt write that book
Whomever: Spin it all you like but the book is about 100 anti-Americans. 100 people who set about to fundamentally change America and who laid the groundwork for what our present occupant in the WH is doing.
It is about those who mooched off real Americans who love their country. None of them contributed to building America. Either they were in politics, academia, entertainment or were Jewish progs.
I wonder though why you didn’t highlight Bill Ayers and Bernadine as well as Malcom X, the NBP, Loony Louis Farrakhan, and others??
I guess the author thinks he is courageous for writing a book about anti-Americans instead of writing a book about Americans who loved their nation and have spent their lives making it the best nation on this planet and selling it to progs. Now that would have been courageous.
Dreier writes: “… Rustin was not a public figure.”
No? Then how is it that I’ve heard and read about him? I am not very familiar with the names of obscure ‘organizers’, propagandists, and other behind-the-scenes figures. Just for example, I’ve never heard of Peter Dreier until Ron wrote about you.
Hitler likewise had a couple of objectionable qualities, however he was quite the progressive, environmentalist, and improved the working conditions of German workers, the public health system, and general hygiene and healthly lifestyle living.
LOL!
You could have saved yourself some grief by putting the words “progressives” or “social reformers” or “radicals” or “leftists” or “communists” in the title. Or just calling it “The Social Justice Hall of Fame,” period. That might have cut into your sales, though.
“…Lyndon Johnson. He was wrong on Vietnam and other foreign policy issues, but his support for the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, and the war on poverty…”
He was “wrong on Vietnam?!” How have the others you enunciated here work out? Civil Rights? Ok, it was a great idea; one whose time had long since come. But the implementation? A complete train wreck; federal housing, AFDC, food stamps, welfare – created generations of impoverished, undereducated and criminally empowered people.
Voting Rights? Another one of the “greatest ideas that never worked!” What started as a means of allowing all Americans to vote spawned voter fraud and complete bastardization of the entire voting process by judicial fiat. (Need I elaborate?)
Medicare and Medicade? Look around, Peter! Besides the (inflation adjusted) multi-trillion dollar failure and untold thousands of people who have died while waiting to be treated, (The “system” killed my OWN Father as he waited for heart surgery the system “couldn’t afford!”) Johnson didn’t have the foresight to keep gov’t from raiding the surplus and dooming hte system(s).
War on poverty? I’d laugh if it wasn’t so sad! Aside from the fact that it merely created incubators for poverty, there’s this; For all the talk about how the wars on terrorism and drugs have been abject failures, this is a war that can never be won. (Bible alert! “The poor you will have with you always.”)
The fact is, every one of Johnson’s “accomplishments” merely exacerbated each of the problems they were sloppily designed to fix. Because…? They were run-by-government!
Does that mean they weren’t needed? I doubt even the most conservative among us would argue they weren’t. However, to use baseball venacular, “It’s all in the delivery!” Each of Johnson’s Great Society programs were built on the Socialist model. And while he wasn’t (I suppose) a Socialist, himself, he threw them together in a sloppy liberal manner and allowed the Socialist ideology (along with political opportunism) to drive them – AND his Great Society into the ground.
Johnson? One of the greats? Made America better? Well, ok, then! (Once again, look around, Pete!)
“but his support for the Civil Rights Act”
Not to mention this is a damned lie. LBJ and the democrats filibustered Civil Rights when Republicans tried to do it and ONLY supported it to make himself and his party look good.
Never forget the 100% completely racist history of the democrat party.
“Everyone I profile in the book…contributed to making America a better society.”
That’s an assertion, not a fact. I’m sure you believe it, but that doesn’t make it true.
“Because the book defines “greatest” as those who helped made the U.S. a more humane and democratic society, it is inherently about politics.”
Wow. What a self-serving definition of the word. And it’s based on the assertion above, which is completely faith-based. Can you build a shakier house of cards?
Well, thanks for acknowledging they were liberals and progressives. I just wish that’d been in the title of the book.
The fact that you have included Rachel Carson disqualifies your book from being serious. That woman is responsible for more deaths than Hitler and Stalin combined.
Just because the deaths she is responsible for were in poor third world countries and ignored by the media, does not absolve her of responsibility.
She is in a special place in Hell and to my dismay I feel a sense of satisfaction rather than sorrow about it, which makes me a rather poor Christian.
I hope you’re brighter and braver than you appeared on the O’Reilly Factor the other night, Mr. Dreier. Your being awarded “distinguished” amuses me – like Hollywood with its numerous award shows honoring themselves. I see leftist academia has followed the Hollywood lead.
I still haven’t quite determined if each of you that deluded about your perceived brilliance, or simply so insecure, you need to be stroked.
You should have stayed in your bubble where you were safe, still sure of the smugness. They say each of us granted our fifteen minutes of fame. You blew yours.
Ron, how about writing a “response” book in the from of 100 men who were truly great in the 20th century. Ford, Rickenbacker, Any one of the airline-builders or aircraft manufacturers whose aircraft bore their names, etc.
Capitalists all, and many of them from dirt-poor to incredibly successful with a lot of challenges and hardship along the way who ultimately carved out a niche for themselves.
How about those people in the space program? There was one such individual named John Houbolt who came up with the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous concept that was initially met with haughty derision from his higher-ups but he put it all on the line, endangered his entire career by writing a letter to Seamans insisting that it’s the only way to get to the moon. A great American, to be sure.
There are more than enough candidates. Military people, capitalists, inventors, (Jobs, Gates) who even have left-leanings but prove that America is the best place to achieve.
And how can you list the 100 greatest Americans of the Twentieth Century and omit Thomas Edison?
Too true.
JP Morgan
Thomas Edison
Calvin Coolidge
Ronald Reagan
Henry Ford
Richard Feynman
Robert Noyce
If I thought about it, I could easily come up with 100 American giants in science and technology, any one of whom would make all 100 progs together look puny by comparison.
The top 3 Americans are:
Bugs Bunny
Tarzan
Superman
2 were adopted, and 1 born in Pismo Beach.
I assume Drier doesn’t list Ronald Reagan as a great President or American hero. Drier’s brand of RBC can’t stand anyone who had as much to do with the defeat of the USSR as did Reagan.
Did I hear Occidental College?? Has anyone else that we know has gone to the same college?? Now it makes sense why the Prez behaves as he does! Indoctrination starts way back when somebody is very very young!!
Was Ronald Reagan on the list?
Ronald Reagan? Hardly.
But I’ll bet Woodrow Wilson and FDR are. Both virulent racists that UNDERMINED America more than they EVER helped.
You see, the left views America thru a lens of hatred and anyone that hates and undermines this country are to be lauded.
I suspect that the title was chosen to make it palatable to curriculum committees.
You mean “cadres” not committees! Use the proper terms comrade!
If I had to do it all over I would gladly use my $100,000+ student loans to just be able to sit at the feet of Mr. Radosh as he gives a proper account of American history.
I have always despised the gong-show approach to history, where lists of the greatest this-or-that are compiled. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. popularized the technique in his surveys for the New York Times of the “greatest” American presidents, but he himself chose the professorial electorate which — surprise, surprise — mirrored his own and the NYT’s partisan prejudices. Such gong shows are in fact mere journalistic nonsense. They have nothing in common with the genuine practice of history.
Regarding this book: I don’t have to take a bite of a s**t sandwich to know it’s going to taste bad.
Here are some real American heroes:
- Ed O’Hare
- Ronald Reagan
- Art Laffer
- Jack Kemp
- Clarence Thomas
- Milton Friedman
- Rush Limbaugh (and his brother David)
These are people who cared deeply about freedom, and took risks to preserve it. The only risk taken at The Nation is that their anti-freedom/anti-truth programs will only partially succeed, because for some reason they always seem to at least do that.
Good choices, but let’s start properly.
John Adams
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
John Jay
et al
Guys, it is Great people of the TWENTIETH century, a lot of your choices are wrong century.
Thomas Edison should be on the list however, as he improved the lives of a lot more people than those listed in the book. By a large margin.
And that is what passes for scholarship in American universities.
It’s disgusting but true, all history and social “science” is taught through the radical Leftist lens.
Progressives have been responsible for the aiding and abetting of more death than any other faction. Ever.
That. Is fact.
The subtitle “A Socail Justice Hall of Fame” is enough to give this book away.
If Mr Dreier feels comfortable enough to come into a den of wolves (i.e. this board) and spend the night, then more power to him. All that is asked of him is to not complain about the bite marks and missing chunks of flesh in the morning.
What an effin’ idiot this lefty prof is! I’m no O’Reilly fan, but this guy can’t even handle softball O’Reilly questions. This is living proof of what happened when lefty professors gave lefty students passing grades so they could keep their 2-S deferment. The “Draft-dodger’s C” gave us today’s Ph.D “distinguished professor.”
I worked hard for those Cees.
A case for Tort Reform Posted on August 9, 2012
http://www.teapartyinfidel.com/tort-reform/
I found it very difficult to watch this guy speak last night on O’Reilly. I know that’s rather shallow but he is disgusting. Therefore, I can’t relate to any of his leftist social-justice hoo-ha. He’s one of the major problems with our country. Sad he teaches.
Any list of the “100 Gretest Americans of the 20th Century” that doesn’t include Ronald Reagan is a joke.
*Of course* a “social justice”-lovin’ prof is going to name lefties. It’s how these people roll. Let’s all salute him with a big “Slava Stalinu!”
It looks like you did make a mistake, Ron.
1. You say that he hid the anti-commumism of people like Bayard Rustin.
2. You say that “all his entries are pro-Communist”.
Did I misread you?
http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2012/08/07/left-wing-professor-peter-dreier/?singlepage=true
Sorry, but anyone who stuck with the CPUSA line through the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact is no sort of gentle idealist, let alone a “Great American.” It’s not as though the nature of the Nazi regime was exactly a mystery by 1939.
That one is my acid test for mid-century social reformers and the like. If your preferred American foreign policy was to keep out of foreign wars, and above all to avoid giving aid to the imperialist British, but changed dramatically once Germany invaded the USSR, you weren’t a naive idealist, but someone whose views tracked the CPUSA, whether you were a formal member of the Party or not.
Re: Paul Robeson: “Great voice, bummer about the Stalinism.” The man was, almost uniquely, in a position to testify about the 1948 purges in a voice that would be heard. He didn’t do it. It was more hateful to him to “help” “reactionaries” in the US than to abandon friends in the USSR. It’s a pity (the man could certainly sing), but I would no more have a Robeson recording in my house than use any of those useful medical data so thoughtfully assembled by Dr. Mengele.
the founder of the UAW, the late Walter Reuther, but rather than comprehend that this trade union leader fought hard to eliminate Communists from the union since he understood that they were a real threat to free labor, he only can explain that “Reuther shared some of the blame” for labor’s decline as well as the AFL chief George Meany, since “as part of the Red Scare, Reuther had expelled many of the most radical and experienced organizers and leaders from labor’s ranks.”
Ron,
Thanks for bringing this up. Too often my fellow right wingers attack the UAW without realizing just how anti-communist Walter Reuther was. While there have been no shortage of lefties in the American labor movement, I think that it’s fundamentally different from the European labor movement in that most American labor unions and their members are capitalist more than socialist. Samuel Gompers, who founded the AFL, said that the biggest sin capital can commit against labor was to fail to earn a profit.
It’s telling how Dreier, as an orthodox leftist, criticizes Reuther for hurting his own union and the labor movement by throwing out the most radical leftists. The left has a hard time dealing with apostates like Reuther and Elia Kazan, who are intimately familiar with how the left operates. In some cases it’s almost personal. Kazan was offended at how the communists tried to subvert art to politics in the Group Theater. Reuther was offended at how the communists tried to subvert his union to Moscow’s goals.
All this book proves is that you can’t be intelligent and a Socialist/Marxist.
If you are intelligent you know that Socialism/Marxism doesn’t and can’t work.
If you are a Socialist/Marxist you are not intelligent, despite the pretensions.
One precludes the other.
I’d reckon that Mr. Radosh makes Mr. Rustin into an even greater American than Mr. Dreier did. Otherwise, Mssrs. Robeson & Seeger will likely remain best known as singers & not as political activists, since they certainly never influenced an election or the ever-popular power struggle that chugs on willy-nilly today.
But Mr. Dreier is not the first author to ignore a person’s contradictions: “stereotype” is the by-word today; for “progressives” (Robert LaFollette, anyone?) & for “reactionaries.” & Since I have no interest in top 100 anything, I won’t be hunting for Mr. Dreier’s book.
When George C. Scott died a 12 or 13 years ago I said to my daughter that it felt like two of my heros had died, Scott and George S. Patton. She said “Oh, that’s aweful!” How is it that we can disagree so much?