Has the U.S. Left Made a Difference?

Without political power or honor as prophets, leftists still helped to make the United States a more humane society. By setting forth bold visions of a different future, they did much to initiate what became common, if seldom uncontroversial, features of American life. These included the advocacy of equal opportunity and equal treatment for women, ethnic and racial minorities, and homosexuals; the enjoyment of sexual pleasure unconnected to reproduction; a media and educational system sensitive to racial and gender oppression and that celebrates what we now call multiculturalism; and the popularity of novels and films with a strongly altruistic and anti-authoritarian point of view.