Features » April 5, 2012 Why America Needs the Left The fight
for true equality since 1776. The struggle over what equality
means is at the core of U.S. history. Without the Left,
liberalism becomes spineless and vapid; without liberalism, the
Left becomes sectarian and marginal. From the beginning of the
American republic, most of the country’s thinkers and
politicians have argued that our nation neither had nor needed a
Left. Historians of the so-called liberal consensus school argue
that the United States has simply always enjoyed agreement on
such matters as private property, individualism, popular
sovereignty and natural rights. Others claim that the country
never developed the leftist working class or peasantry seen in
other nations, a claim often termed American exceptionalism.
Still others say that the country doesn’t need a Left because it
already believes in, or has even achieved, such goals as
democracy and equality – a view held by Cold War liberals and
neoconservatives. But these are all false an