ABSTRACT
Contemporary empowerment practice in the United States is a vestige of the revolutionary impulse to free the worlds oppressed and a remnant of the nation's mass movements for greater socioeconomic equality. The ineffectiveness of empowerment practice is paradoxical in the face of its large and growing popularity. The segregation of empowerment practice by race, gender, ethnicity, and so forth resurrects the bleakest chapters in American history. Policy romanticism is a flight from reason and reality, and empowerment practice is one of its expressions. Policy romanticism is realized politically as democratic populism in the United States. Policy romanticism is realized politically as democratic populism in the United States. In contrast with democratic populism, democratic progressivism has been a persistent but minor theme in the United States. Reactionary tribalism retards the acquiescence in a common culture of decency that, with fits and starts, tempts the United States.
