“Indeed, this speaks to the most striking difference between the world that Lyons described and the one we contend with today: it’s no longer a tiny, if disproportionately influential, political entity waving the Left’s banner; it’s one of the two major parties. True enough, the Democrats have long cast themselves as the party of the dispossessed, and their policies have steadily moved the country leftward; and it is also the case, as Lyons recounts, that during the New Deal years, leading administration figures, including Eleanor Roosevelt, unknowingly served as props at Communist-sponsored events advertised as “democratic and anti-Fascist.” But following the Hitler–Stalin pact, even Mrs. Roosevelt distanced herself from the radicals. From then on, and nearly to the present day, the self-evident superiority of the capitalist over the socialist model was mainstream doctrine in both parties. No more.” Harry Stein, “The Red Decade, Redux,” City Journal, Spring 2019.
Celebrating and Defending Americanism
America Prime 