Jonah Goldberg on Liberal Books Worth Reading

"As I've written a bunch of times, I think liberals have cut themselves off from their own intellectual tradition, to the point where the giants of the true liberal tradition — Locke, Smith, the Founders, etc. — are vastly more celebrated on the right than on the left. But even the founders of "modern liberalism" (i.e. Progressivism), which means almost the exact opposite of traditional liberalism, are very rarely celebrated by self-described liberals today. Don't take my word for it — E. J. Dionne admits as much in his book Stand Up Fight Back: "Liberals and Democrats tend not to view themselves as the inheritors of a grand tradition. Almost on principle, they are suspicious of such traditions, of too much theorizing, of linking themselves too much to the past." Modern liberalism has lots of intellectual giants, but liberal totem poles tend to feature activists more than thinkers and writers. Indeed, of the intellectual giants who formed (or deformed) modern liberalism — Herbert Croly, John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr, et al. — "not one of them is routinely celebrated by today's liberals," according to Dionne. (Meanwhile, the avatar of movement liberalism these days — that Daily Kos guy — admits he doesn't really read books much at all)."