Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

The U.S. has been seeking the center since the days of Teddy Roosevelt

Opinion

Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.

The conventional wisdom amongst American historians, politicians, pundits and citizens is that the United States took a sharp turn toward the left during the Progressive, New Deal and Great Society eras. This perspective, however, is only instructive when you look at our political and economic history from the standpoint of American history. From the standpoint of world history, the United States took a sharp turn toward the center during these three historic time periods.

The explanation for this fundamental difference is plain. In the United States, we have existed within the confines of what the late Harvard political scientist Louis Hartz called "the liberal tradition.” Unlike the United Kingdom and the countries on the European continent, the United States had neither a feudal past and a long heritage of monarchs nor a socialist tradition.

Our political tradition, Hartz argued in 1955, revolved around individual rights based on the political philosophy of John Locke, whose views we would today call libertarian. Rights theory in the 20th century also included the "liberal" mixed economy or "liberal" welfare state. In any case, Hartz argued that we never developed a serious socialist tradition because we had no tradition of centrally controlled government associated with right-wing monarchies.


Therefore, by the early 20th century the liberal capitalist order did, from our perspective, take a sharp turn to the left when two Republicans – President Theodore Roosevelt and Wisconsin Gov./Sen. Robert LaFollette – and Democratic President Woodrow Wilson led efforts to rein in big business.

They busted up Standard Oil and the trusts in general and created federal agencies to regulate the flow of money (Federal Reserve Board), the production and distribution of food (Food and Drug Administration), and the transportation of commerce across state lines (Federal Trade Commission). They created a federal income tax and gave women the right to vote.

The New Deal and the Great Society kept traveling left, with the National Labor Relations Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Social Security Administration, the National Industrialization Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, Medicare, Medicaid and affirmative action.

From the standpoint of world history, however, the United States since the early 1900s has been moving toward the center, because socialism became the rival force to capitalism from the mid-19th century through the work of writers in France, the U.K. and especially Germany, namely Karl Marx. By 1917 the Russian Revolution brought forth the first major socialist, indeed communist, totalitarian state.

Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, even Barack Obama and Joe Biden are regarded as socialists by huge numbers of Republican voters and many Republican politicians. From the perspective of world history, none of these democratic leaders comes close to being a socialist leader. The social democracies of the Nordic countries today, and indeed the socialist-led coalitions on and off in Germany, France and the United Kingdom since World War II, represent the real leftist challenge to the advanced industrial age, the information age and capitalism.

The truth is, the United States and the Western democracies, which are all multiparty parliamentary democracies with a strong socialist presence, have been striving since the 1930s to find the center between laissez-faire capitalism and democratic socialism. It is true that Germany and Italy during World War II became fascist regimes, but those are exceptions.

In the U.S. and the U.K. many Clinton Democrats and members of the Tony Blair Labor Party have been seeking to find the "Third Way," which is really the "New Center," since the 1990s. Our left-right spectrum, which has never had a strong socialist presence (though Sen. Bernie Sanders has given socialism a real boost) occupies the middle of the ideological spectrum – we're in between the two 40-yard lines on a U.S. football field.

If we are to maintain our democracy, in the next 10 years we must find ways to educate ourselves about the reality of our quest for the next stage of the center – on the left side of the center or the right side of the center – whether through nonprofit organizations, political leaders, schools or some combination. Otherwise, we will continue to talk past each other, misidentify each other, and confuse each other in our very narrow perspective on ourselves and the rest of the world.

Read More

The Roots of America’s Violence:
White Supremacy, Power, and the Struggle for Dignity
Ragiv:Charlie Kirk in Tampa July 2025 (cropped).jpg - Vükiped

The Roots of America’s Violence: White Supremacy, Power, and the Struggle for Dignity

In September 2025, activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a Utah campus event. His death was shocking — not only for its brutality, but because it showed that political violence is not just a relic of the past or a threat on the horizon. It is part of our national identity. Today’s surge in violence follows patterns we’ve seen before. Let’s take a look at that history.

When Pope Alexander VI issued the Doctrine of Discovery in 1493, he gave theological and legal cover for European conquest of lands already inhabited by indigenous people. These papal bulls declared non-Christian peoples “less than” and their lands open for seizure. This was more than a geopolitical maneuver — it embedded into the Western imagination a belief in the inherent supremacy of some over others.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Noosphere Is Here–and the Struggle for Its Soul Now Runs Through Musk, Putin, and Trump

The noosphere is here—and it’s under siege. This essay explores how Musk, Trump, and Putin are shaping the global mind through Starlink, X, and cognitive warfare.

Getty Images, Yuichiro Chino

The Noosphere Is Here–and the Struggle for Its Soul Now Runs Through Musk, Putin, and Trump

In the early 20th century, two thinkers—Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky and French Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin—imagined a moment when humanity’s collective consciousness would crystallize into a new planetary layer: the noosphere, from the Greek nous, meaning “mind.” A web of thought enveloping the globe, driven by shared knowledge, science, and a spiritual awakening.

Today, the noosphere is no longer speculation. It is orbiting above us, pulsing through the algorithms of our digital platforms. And it is being weaponized in real time. Its arrival has not ushered in global unity but cognitive warfare. Its architecture is not governed by democracies or international institutions but by a handful of unaccountable actors.

Keep ReadingShow less
2025 Democracy Awards Ceremony Celebrates Bipartisan Excellence in Public Service

The Democracy Awards Ceremony hosted by the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) on Thursday, September 18, 2025

Credit: CMF

2025 Democracy Awards Ceremony Celebrates Bipartisan Excellence in Public Service

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) hosted its annual Democracy Awards Ceremony on Thursday, September 18, recognizing exceptional Members of Congress and staff who exemplify outstanding public service, operational excellence, and innovation in their work on Capitol Hill.

In the stately House Ways & Means Committee Hearing Room, the 8th annual Democracy Awards ceremony unfolded as a heartfelt tribute to the congressional offices honored earlier this summer. The event marked more than just a formal recognition—it was a celebration of integrity, dedication, and the enduring spirit of public service.

Keep ReadingShow less
What Makes Trump’s Power Grab Different?

Workers hang a large photo of President Donald Trump next to a U.S. flag on the facade of the Department of Labor headquarters building in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 27, 2025.

Drew Angerer/AFP/Getty Images/TNS

What Makes Trump’s Power Grab Different?

For many, the evidence is in: Donald Trump wants to be an autocrat. If you haven’t read an op-ed or heard a radio, TV or podcast commentator make that case, it’s probably because you’ve tried hard to avoid doing so. It would require virtually never watching cable news, including pro-Trump outlets, because there are few things Fox News and its imitators love more than running clips of MSNBC hosts and other “resistance” types, not to mention Democratic politicians, melting down over Trump’s “war on democracy,” “authoritarian power-grabs,” etc.

Move further to the right, and you’ll find populists who want Trump to be an autocrat. They use terms like “Red Caesarism,” or “neomonarchism,” while others pine for an American Pinochet or Francisco Franco or compare Trump to biblical figures like the Persian King Cyrus or ancient Israel’s King David. I can’t really blame anyone for taking these pathetic Bonapartists at their word.

Keep ReadingShow less