Michael Kazin has a good article up at The New Republic that raises an issue I've been wondering about for a while. Walk into any bookstore and you'll find the shelves packed with fresh copies of books from a conservative bent, some of them coming from the same author in a few months time. In Kazin's article entitled Why Don’t Liberals Write Big Books Anymore? he asks where is this generation's Tom Hayden, Jane Jacobs, James Baldwin, Howard Zinn, Betty Friedman, or Rachel Carson? Liberal authors who didn't just respond defensively to the right, the way Will Bunch, Naomi Klein, or Thomas Frank do, but actually aspired to be visionaries and movement leaders.
Obviously there are more information sources today than books. But almost everything "liberal" that currently gets produced in any format is just going to be a defensive reaction to something from the right, and almost nothing seeks to actively promote and lead a progressive agenda through pop culture. Arguably at a time when the conservative media empire is so powerful and pervasive, the job of defending against it is a required full time job. But Kazin argues:
the bullheadedness of the right is precisely why big, original ideas by liberal and radical writers are needed. Conservatives gained ideological dominance by proudly declaring their principles and criticizing the left for having the wrong ones or none at all.
Discuss.
P.S.
If you have any good recent examples, name them. I for one would recommend Kazin's own book American Dreamers, a history of the progressive movement.