Who are America’s Heroes? A Debate with Peter Dreier
In my last column, I wrote a critique of the activist professor Peter Dreier’s new book. Dreier wrote an answer, which appeared as comment number 7 and which I reprint below.
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.
Because I believe dialogue and argument are important and that our side — rather than that represented by Dreier — is correct, I welcome this chance to bring his remarks to attention in my own column, and to proceed to answer him. First, I thank Dreier for writing a serious response to my critique of his book, and for avoiding ad hominem remarks so typical of many on the Left. It is important to have the opportunity to debate serious issues with one’s opponents, and it is to Dreier’s credit that he obviously agrees with this and has sought to engage me on our very real differences.
First, Dreier has a traditional and I believe very wrong-headed comprehension of the reforms of the Progressive era and its aftermath, including the New Deal. I am surprised that he seems unfamiliar with the pioneering work of an entire group of left-wing historians of the 60’s and 70’s, including Gabriel Kolko’s The Triumph of Conservatism, my friend the late James Weinstein’s The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, and my friend Martin J. Sklar’s masterpiece, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism. These scholars, like the late libertarian economic historian Murray N. Rothbard, (with whom I co-authored a book, A New History of Leviathan, that you can download free on the internet), all of whom provide a very different paradigm of our past than the one favored by Dreier.
“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.”
I’m sorry, but this is a silly thing to say. There is no way a law can make meat safe. The only way you can make meat safe is by storing and cooking it properly. You don’t need to watch Hell’s Kitchen to know the ramifications of serving poorly stored and raw meat.
On top of this, Teddy Roosevelt was known for not liking small business because they couldn’t be effectively controlled and favored solutions that sought to bind big business together with government. As Mr. Radosh stated, Mr. Sinclair’s little book and “exposure” on the meatpacking industry (which was exposed as a fabrication) was not needed. All that was needed was back room deals and quid pro quo on the part of the colluders in government and the big meatpacking firms.
I did enjoy reading Mr. Dreier’s response, though. It was very respectful, but maybe it’s because it’s Mr. Radosh that is doing the responding, not some schmoe like me.
Well, Rachel Carson was fairly influential. A few tens of thousands of dead Africans owe her some serious payback, since she (on zero evidence) was the primary one behind the DDT ban that brought malaria back into the forefront.
But she certainly wasn’t a scientist.
Also interesting is he specifically mentions Henry Wallace as a scientist, but not his friend George Washington Carver, who made greater contributions. Is Carver in the book?
Not to mention the explosion of bed bug infestations in the US. A few dollars worth of DDT could rid your home or apartment of the nasty creatures. But since it is banned completely, you have to spend thousands of dollars for less effective and more inconvenient treatments.
The trouble with the EPA and environmentalists is that they can’t differentiate between a homeowner (or exterminator) spreading a few ounces of DDT around a house (even a lot of houses), and agribusiness and municipalities spreading tons over dozens of square miles for pest and mosquito control (as was done in the past).
The numbers are in the millions of dead due to the DDT ban. Rachel Carson, while key in this slaughter of innocents, was not the only one. Ruckelshaus, Nixon’s EPA head, is the one who banned DDT in the US.
He also has the deaths of millions on his hands.
Would you believe tens and perhaps hundreds of millions? The world is a big place.
But, as Ruth Bader Ginsberg said, “Wasn’t that what abortion (and, I guess, the DDT ban) was all about?”: less black babies?
See, they even say it out loud, for chrissakes, and noone ever listens.
Libs, communists, socialists; these are meaningless distinctions.
They all hate people, and will lie, cheat, and steal to do it. Leftism is a mental defect.
Was any Nazi eugenicist ever as succesful as the Democrats have been in destroying human life? Go ahead, do the numbers: abortion alone makes them the worst killers outside of China in history! Making humans suffer is their raison d’etre. Just as long as it’s not them.
And Jews still vote for them.
Why? I continue to be puzzled by this.
All of the above historians argue, with convincing evidence, that the reforms that Dreier heralds as a result of response to struggles from below were actually sponsored, supported, and introduced into legislation by large corporate interests that sought state and government regulation in order to destroy small business competitors that could not afford to offer goods like safe meat.
In the modern day, corporations like DuPont supported the Ozone depletion scam because they weren’t making much money from R-12 Freon, but they happened to have a ozone-friendly substitute R-134 ready for production just when the ban went into effect.
Likewise GE wasn’t making squat off incandescent bulbs so they backed the Greenies to ban them. The only replacements were the CFLs already in production which made GE a tidy little profit.
GE continues their green BS by claiming to fight Global Warming. That’s only because they are heavily invested in wind technology, and received a boatload of stimulus money as an alternative energy source.
Tom T, You are mistaken about the DuPont company and the Freon example (I have worked there for 28 years and know that we worked long and hard to find a replacement BECAUSE the government had decided to phase out CFC’s). Just wanted to clear that up.
The Cliff Notes version, straight from from Dreier:
“Margaret Sanger’s….advocacy of women’s reproductive freedom was a blow for human rights”
Really? And which humans would that be?
The ones killed, for the mere convenience of others?
Dreir is a Commie Statist.
Just like all the rest.
No matter how many pages he writes, it only takes a sentence or two to realize it can (should) all be dismissed as typical boilerplate left-ism, small ‘c’ commie, wannabe dictator/insider policy circle elitist B*llsh*t.
Like the chances of sun rising tomorrow, there are some things I dont have to over-analyze point by point to get to the truth.
Some of them are (wait for it!)
“Self Evident”
Seeing how you get right to the point, so will I:
Amen.
I saw Dreir on O’Reily’s program on Fox. He certainly comes off as a serious academic.
What bothers me about philisophical leftists like Dreir is their unyielding belief in the goodness of the state and collectivism for solving humanity’s problems, in spite of the enormous evidence that the state is a cumbersome and often beligerant player, in no way benign. For example, the fact that FDR’s policies prolonged the great depression is lost on academics like Dreir, they allow their theory of human behavior to blind them from actual fact.
Collectivism fails to ignite motivation and innovation in the human soul. When you don’t own the product of your labor, or the teeth in your head the only end is atrophy. This is lost completely on idle dreamers like Dreir.
History will not treat Marxist apologists at all well.
“I saw Dreir on O’Reily’s program on Fox. He certainly comes off as a serious academic.”
Yeah, you sure know how to cut a guy – he was exactly that bad. Having previously called O’Reilly a “right wing buffoon”, he couldn’t give even one example of how the term applied to O’Rielly, which I knew was going to be the first question Bill asked him. But Drier didn’t, so I guess he’s never watched O’Rielly’s show, either, as part of his extensive “academic research”?
Here’s a long list of Bill O’Reilly’s right-wing buffoonery: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/bill-oreilly_b_1773043.html
It is also instructive to see these academics…who are making a fat living off the taxpayers…fall in line. And why do we pay these nuts to teach our children (vide Ayers).
Drier exhibits the common leftist outlook: he loves ‘humanity’ in the abstract, but regards individual human beings as things, animals or machines. With everything that implies.
rachel Carson killed millions of african babies, and children with her book silent spring, which talks about ddt being bad for the enviroment(she had no scientific proof).DDt was banned, and so the very needdy, and poor who lived in huts died…..
What if we changed the criterion away from “service to the collectivity and subordination to the state” to “self-reliance and resistance to the state?” What if the promotion of individual liberty is the primary value?
Here is the beginning of my list of American Heroes:
1. George Washington. He proved that liberty depends on effective action. It is not just a concept. It must be won.
2. Thomas Jefferson. Classic libertarian revolutionary.
3. Sam Adams. Firebrand for individual liberty. We need him today.
4. John Adams. He knew that liberty is a quality of political organization.
5. James Madison. Massive intellect that dwarfs that of every contemporary academic.
6. Ronald Reagan. What he said.
7. Milton Friedman. Brilliant theorist of laissez-faire economics.
8. Ayn Rand. Brilliant polemicist who articulated the American vision.
9. Antonin Scalia. Thank God he is on the court.
10. Clarence Thomas. There is something about quiet heroes who don’t need PR.
11. Martin Luther King. That “content of character” idea trumps race, class, and gender.
12. Booker T. Washington. Proved that freedom means producing, creating, inventing.
13. Thomas Sowell. Brilliant economist and sociologist. A true public intellectual.
14. Crispus Attucks. He believed in America and he put it all on the line.
15. Ethan Allen. Unlike Che, he was an effective guerilla fighter.
16. Lysander Spooner. His critique of slavery and the postal service are fundamental to all pro-liberty thought. Oh, and he was right about the postal service.
17. Murray Rothbard. Destroyed every pretense in Keynesian and Marxist economic thought.
18. Abraham Lincoln. Kept the country together in the worst of times.
19. Mark Twain. Great insight into everyday life in America.
20. William Graham Sumner. There are reasons why the fascist academics hate him.
21. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Took the fight to the Nazis and kicked their asses.
22. Douglas MacArthur. Took the fight to the enemy and kicked their asses, including Truman’s.
23. Chuck Norris. Symbolic perhaps, but he can bitch-slap Sean Penn. Then again, my 10 year old niece can bitch-slap Sean Penn.
24. John Wayne. Never apologize.
25. Wayne LaPierre. He gets a lot of criticism, but an effective advocate.
26. Horatio Alger. Attitude matters.
27. Pamela Geller. Tough lady who nails Islam and sharia.
28. Robert Spencer. Tough intellectual who nails Mohammed, Islam and sharia.
29. Henry Ford. Effectiveness in the workplace matters.
30. Sam Walton. He has done more to feed and clothe Americans than all of Dreier’s zeroes combined.
31. Mel Brooks. No one can make movies like Blazing Saddles anymore. He effectively pushed the limits of free speech, all in the name of laughter.
32. Groucho Marx. More subversive than Karl and he didn’t sponge off of Engels’ father. Duck Soup, anyone?
33. Christopher Reeve. Courage and grace in the face of absolute adversity. He was Superman.
34. Rudy Giuliani. I’m not going for purity here. The fact is, he rose to the occasion in the defense of liberty.
35. Robert Heinlein. The Earth is a Harsh Mistress.
36. George W. Bush. Dare I say it? He, too, rose to the occasion when it mattered most.
Amazing that this piece of garbage is what passes as a distinguished professor in this country.
It’s amazing what he is willing to excuse as long as the person has promoted a piece of his agenda.
Hey professor, how about nominating Dr. Josef Mengele for your forthcoming book “The 100 Greatest People Ever”. Sure Dr. Mengele did some revolting medical experiments to Jews but, it’s not about whether he is a saint or not, it’s the contribution that counts, right professor?
Dreier is scum and his premises demonstrate everything that is wrong in college academia these days!
Agreed. However, political conformity with the leftist agenda is a requisite for achieving “distinguished professor” status these days in the humanities and social sciences. This is another example why we need to de-fund and privatize education at all levels. The providers need to serve the consumers; not the other way around.
“humanities and social sciences”
Ah, the Fairy Dust of Academia…
One of the few places on earth where (pardon the pun) Dreary Leftists can float to the top…their pride and pedigrees based on the unverifiable, the meaningless, the self-contradictory and the unworkable…..theoretical gibberish, unshackled from the constraints of proof, precedent, fact or function, spewing forth as Policy Gospel for us all to live by.
A world of what could be, because I argue it so…. my arguments, supported by my theories, reported in my newspapers, and agreed upon by myself, prove my world exists according to my own ever-flexible laws of personal physics.
The Infinity Degree have I.
And Infinity Proposals of how things SHOULD be, even when they are not nor have ever been,
is the realm of my exquisite expertise all the lesser mortals shall heed.
Only in subsidized, profit and product-less environments…in colleges and in Governments…
can the likes of a Dreier be an “expert” in anything.
Because bridges, my friend, cannot be built with popular opinions, and fashionable cliché’s.
Any more than a perfect Pant Crease can make a Leader.
Which is why none who profess such nonsensical fantasies, has ever earned a dime BUILDING a damn thing themselves,
Other than their padded resumes.
I saw Prof. Dreier on O’Reilly. He attempted to say he *complimented* O’Reilly by calling him a right-wing buffoon. This wasn’t his only failed attempt at cleverness but he only embarrassed himself.
I wonder if the eminent professor recalls the origin of the word “buffoon”? Count Buffon pretended to be unserious in order to avoid the guillotine while espousing heretical (evolutionary) ideas. So being called a buffoon might, in fact, be complimentary as Drier asserts.
Here’s a long list of O’Reilly right-wing buffoonery: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/bill-oreilly_b_1773043.html
To really get a feel for what Marxism is wearing as its masquerade costume in the 21st century, you should read Dreier’s book place matters:Metropolitics for the Twenty-first Century. I’m sure he is testy about Kurtz. Dreier cannot like the attention right now on that book. Especially from those of us who also understand Agenda 21 and how Obama’s education model via Common Core seeks to replicate the Marxist theory of the mind.
I am stunned by how well it all fits together to get us back to essentially everything CPUSA ever wanted. Except the taxpayers are naively funding their own destruction.
With a little help from the charitable foundations.
Does Kurtz know the community organizers like Gamaliel and Industrial Areas are now shaking down the philanthropies to make sure their donations are targeted per john a powell’s vision?
It was indeed a good time to shed the light on the Regional Equity Movement. Also explains the interest in Van Jones. it was eco-equity and the idea that in a govt controlled economy they can dictate who gets hired, where to locate, and what credentials qualify.
Almost everything Kurtz says about me in his two books is a lie.
‘Progressive movement’ – in of itself is a counterproductive, hari kari-like ‘mission’. There’s no, ‘progress’ in ‘Progressive’.
How supposed ‘academics’ like Dreier continue to be taken seriously for the ridiculous, proven to have failed ’causes’ he champions is beyond analysis and thought.
For we’ve analyzed Socialism/ Socialism-lite, big and small ‘C’ for eons. It’s failed each and EVERY TIME it’s implemented. Medicare, Medicaid anyone..?
I’m sure many here have read Nikolai Bukharin’s, ‘The Prison Manuscripts: Socialism and Its Culture’. Fascinating and chilling.
Dreier propping up Medicare, Medicaid, thee main influences for our country’s economic demise and ‘wealth redistribution/ lethargy’ has shown to be a bust for ~ 50 years now only proves Dreier’s, ‘knowledge’ or lack thereof.
Dreier’s propping up The Great Society B S has overwhelmingly contributed to the decimation of the 2-parent Black family, government independence and providing infinite fictional ‘excuses’ for it’s destruction.
Multi-generations of Black people being ENCOURAGED no less by Democrats, pinheads like Dreier and the relic-like race baiters to live on welfare. Indefinitely. Today that ‘lifestyle’ is often billed as, ‘The Black experience’. Sickening.
The aforementioned is in reality strangling ALL people’s self-esteem to succeed in the many facet’s of one’s life.
Writer Matt LaBash’s, ‘Flyfishing with Darth Vader’ writes of his albeit short experience with Black politician/ activist who’d ‘made it’ so to speak in Marion Barry. There is NO ‘making it’ in Barry’s case and nor as a Black Democratic politician. It’s a facade. The Norton Holmes, Jackson Lee’s, Connors, Cummings, Fattah’s etc., KNOW they’re not improving their Black constituent’s lives by any means whatsoever. Though will NEVER say otherwise.
The incredible late-Eric Hoffer or like-minded person would chew up, spit out Dreier’s and like minded types’ nonsense if provided vis-à-vis.
I saw the guy on O’Reilly and after like 20 words I changed the channel.
I have a nice TV and I’m not about to do unrandom acts of violence to my electronics equipment.
I will respond briefly to Ron’s response to my critique of his review of my book, realizing that I won’t persuade Ron and that I certainly won’t persuade the readers who commented on Ron’s review, most of whom seem like right-wing lunatics. After this, the dust will have to settle, and I won’t bother continuing this exchange, since we’re obviously talking past each other.
1. Yes, I am very familiar with the Weinstein/Kolko/Sklar view of American history that gives most of the credit for Progressive Era reforms to big business. I wrote about my disagreements with this view in several articles many years ago. It is usually the case that big business is divided over how to respond to protest from below. Some segments of big business seek to repress protest with violence, injunctions, jail, and even deportation. Another segment of big business seeks to co-opt protest by adopting less radical versions of the reforms they demand. The “corporate liberal” wing of big business that Weinstein/Kolko/Sklar and others write about represents the latter group. They don’t give enough credit to the role of progressive and radical protest to which business was responding. Other historians understand that all progressive change is a consequence of the interplay of these forces, and give both “outsiders” and “insiders” appropriate credit, as I do in my book.
2. Ron’s view of “communist control” of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is absurd. Were there a handful of Communists involved with SNCC. No doubt. Did they “control” the organization? No way. There is no evidence for this, but Ron thinks that any organization in which even a handful of Communists are involved must be “controlled” by the Communists.
3. Likewise, Ron’s view of Michael Harrington is distorted, perhaps shaped by his own exile from DSOC and DSA. Maurice Isserman’s biography, THE OTHER AMERICAN, is a more reliable source on Harrington’s life, political trajectory, and influence.
I won’t bother responding to Ron’s other misconceptions. That’s it for this “exchange.”
As for Number 2:
Find me ANY organisation with ANY, open, known, avowed actual communists in it, and I will show you an organization DOMINATED, if not outright controlled, by their Marxist Beliefs. Period.
My local school board is “commie light”, and has been since the 60′s. Same for our local college. A hard left marxist social ideology is THE intellectual currency there. Anything else is simply scoffed at.
And all done without a single, official, open, card carrying Communist Party Member in it.
Because they dont NEED to show the flag, when they ALREADY control the castle.
So your “taqyia” statements that OPEN commies can be “part of” an organisation without controlling it, are as truthful and likely as the notion of Taxing Ourselves into Prosperity.
Dear Prof. Dreier, One short rejoinder does not constitute an intellectual debate. Ignore, for the moment, the commentators on this site. Your debate opponent is Mr. Radosh. Why not respond in detail to his points, as he did to yours, and give non-scholars such as I a chance to learn. Perhaps PJ Media could publish the back and forth without commenters [such as me] who are largely pro Radosh. Wouldn’t this serve the quest for historical truth which is the aim of all scholars. Indeed, it could go down in history as a defining moment in the history of famous debates. Don’t pass up this opportunity.
Well it seems Prof. Drier has a website for his book and is seeking your thoughts in the comments section. Please keep it civil. But do make your points. He needs the feedback from outside his bubble.
RE: Because the book defines “greatest” as those who helped made the U.S., it is inherently about politics.
I guess a book can define any word any way it wants?
The US is “a more humane and democratic society” because of “those” who make it that way, be they “great” or “mean”.
Politics is just a leech along for the free ride.
I bumped into Peter Dreier at Occidental College last week and within minutes learned I was a “nut” “liar” “racist” and a “failure.” (I am featured myself in Kurtz’s Radical-In-Chief as someone who verifies young Obama’s commitment to Marxist socialist thought.) Ironically, I’ve published my own views on the Progressive Era and I think it is fair to say that Dreier does not understand the role that child labor activists played in creating the U.S. welfare state. Even worse, Dreier does not understand the role Robeson played in promoting the Soviet Union under Stalin. Based on my personal experience with Dreier, I can report that he is a completely unhinged person.