The basic story in the American past, the only story ultimately worth the telling, is the story of the struggle between the creative and the frustrating elements in the democratic adventure...
Every generation needs to know what it is fighting against, whom it is fighting with, what it is fighting for…
At critical stages in the struggle with plutocratic control, there have been upsurges of democratic strength…
To me the most important development in the radical movement does not lie in its replacement of capitalism for fascism as the tyrant-symbol, nor even in its Popular Front tactic… It lies in its rediscovery of the past…. We have looked back to history, and we have found a usable past – and one that we can call ours. And such a discovery of the past, if it is sincere and deeply experienced, may set us on our own path to the future.
– Max Lerner, It Is Later than You Think:
The Need for a Militant Democracy (1938)
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