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Radical Revision

Reclaiming the history of the left from leftist historians.

May 12, 2008, Vol. 13, No. 33 • By RONALD RADOSH
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A Conservative History of the American Left

by Daniel J. Flynn

Crown-Forum, 464 pp. $27.50

This title does Daniel J. Flynn's fine new history a disservice. Some readers seeking a thorough and critical history of the left in America are likely to ignore it because of its claim to be a "conservative history." Flynn is certainly a conservative, as some of his candid and pithy judgments indicate, but what he gives readers is a well-rounded history of the left that should be read by anyone interested in the subject--and that includes those who call themselves left or liberal.

Flynn understands what any good historian knows: "To project our ideological needs upon the past," he writes, "makes the past more the present than the past." This perspective allows him to acknowledge that "the Left has a rich, vibrant, exciting history." Its problem, as he reveals, is its inability to learn from its own past, its excesses, and its tortured history.

The left may have had European roots but, as Flynn puts it, "much of the American Left is firmly rooted in the American tradition." Those on the left who honored and worked through American democratic institutions, and who spoke the language of America, were the most successful. Think Eugene V. Debs. But very quickly others on the left condemned their brethren for not being real leftists. They invoked doctrinal purity, and pounced upon those who respected religion and considered themselves patriots.

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