Our Pick For 2006 Book of The Year
Being Right Is Not Enough :What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success
by Paul Waldman
There are a ton of political self-help books on the market days but this one was our absolute favorite of the past year. In plain-spoken and sometimes brutally honest language, author Paul Waldman says what needs to be said about why progressive have lost so much ground has been lost over the past two decades.
Waldman also ablely dispels the myth that America is a "conservative country" with facts that make it clear that Americans are far more progressive than some in Washington and in the media would have you believe. Moreover, he takes on the notion that conservatism, as a political philosophy, has been a positive for the nation. Waldman reminds us that in the war that is politics, the progressives of old were fighters who helped build the American middle class and the country we all grew in; It was they who fought for the end of child labor, better pay and benefits for working people, civil rights and women's rights.
The author masterfully cuts through all the calculation and babble about "framing" and simply challenges us to the return to the progressive vision of America that "we are all in it together".
Despite the elation over the new Congress, progressives make up only a small part of that institution. We've learned from past experience can't necessarily count on centrists Democrats to fight against free trade agreements, attempts to kill much-needed healthcare reform, or to defend our eroded civil liberties should in a crisis. Progressives still have much more to do and have a long journey ahead, in this regard Paul Waldman's Being Right Is Not Enough brilliantly presents a way forward.
