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If Biden Wants to Be Like F.D.R., He Needs the Left

Jamelle Bouie New York Times
Radical agitation helped bring Social Security and much of the New Deal into being. Simply put, an ambitious, active left is one that widens the scope of reform. It’s a left that, even if you disagree with it, helps clear the pathways for action.

books

Inside Every Foreigner

Jackson Lears London Review of Books
With public support rising for a living-waged Green New Deal as a job creating and environmental lifeline, its a good time to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of FDR's program. The review of his recent biography does that.

A World at War

Bill McKibben The New Republic
We're under attack from climate change-and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII. It's not that global warming is like a world war. It is a world war. And we are losing. Defeating the Nazis required more than brave soldiers. It required a wholesale industrial retooling. In this war we're in-the war that physics is fighting hard, and that we aren't-winning slowly is the same as losing.

Bernie Sanders: How I See Democratic Socialism

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders visits Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. to share his vision for a United States more equal, more just and more prosperous through democratic socialism.

Bernie Defines Socialism

Harold Meyerson The American Prospect
Evoking Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr., the Vermont senator bridged the aspirations of New Deal liberalism with the democratic socialist tradition.

Tidbits - August 14, 2014

Portside
Reader Comments - Victory for Americans: Walgreens Won't "Invert"; Rosetta Comet Rendezvous; Reflections on My Seven Months in Israel; Incipient Inflation Freak-Out Could Wreck Economy; Jews Who Protest Israeli Policy; Academic Freedom Under Attack - The Firing of Steven Salaita; Anti-Semitism; Virgin America Flight Attendants Vote To Join Union; Healthcare - the NHS; Market Basket Srtike - Why Its So Important; On This Day in History - FDR Signs Social Security Act

Henry Wallace, America's Forgotten Visionary

Peter Dreier Truthout
One of the great "What if?" questions of the 20th century is how America would have been different if Henry Wallace rather than Harry Truman had succeeded Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. Filmmaker Oliver Stone has revived this debate in his current ten-part Showtime series, "The Untold History of the United States," and his new book (written with historian Peter Kuznick) of the same name.
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