Commentary
In April, 1978, when I was college sophomore, I went to hear a night-time guest lecture by Michael Harrington, the sociologist and author of the influential 1960s book, “The Other America: Poverty in the United States.” The book profiled various impoverished American demographic groups who missed the 1950s wave of prosperity.
Though Harrington was a socialist, he was an entertaining, boisterous speaker. Harrington entitled his address “America: Left, Right and Center.” In front of an audience of about 70 people, mostly professors, he opined that although America might then be said to be moving either socially and politically left or right—or in his words, in both directions at the same time—the United States was a stubbornly centrist culture and would remain so….