ABSTRACT

Written immediately after World War II in the wake of the New Deal and the victory over fascism, the narrative which frames Madison's Critics and Crusaders is one of progress towards "social democracy", a continuous process enabled or, at the least, enhanced by the endeavors of radicals. A decade later—in the heyday of the postwar liberal consensus, Pax Americana and the suppression of radicalisms at home and abroad—Goldberg and his co-author of the Introduction, William Appleman Williams, advanced a quite different and far more sombre view of things. In the wake of the long 1980s, one might readily assume that the historical perspective framing Buhle, Buhle and Kaye's The American Radical would echo the views and sentiments of Goldberg and Williams rather than those of Madison. For very compelling reasons, the study of American radicals should be essential homework for this generation.