As the title of this book indicates, I believe that what passes for public debate in America is barren because of the failure of will and a poverty of ideals among American liberals. I am not a liberal but a Social Democrat. However, if there is to be any hope of a Social Democratic America there must first be a liberal America, so our fates are conjoined. The spokespeople for conservatism are articulate and spirited. But much of their success is due to the fact that liberals have been so feeble in criticizing their agenda and suggesting real alternatives. No one ever won a political debate by endless repetition of the refrain “but everything is going wrong.”

I believe that the entire center of American politics, both Republicans and Democrats, has lost touch with reality and the ideals on which the Republic was founded. Debate on race, class, foreign policy, how to safeguard Israel, how to live a good life, is obscured as if some great dark cloud of self-imposed censorship had descended on our minds. And yet, America has a great political tradition given definitive expression by our patron saint, Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps the first step toward clarity is to recall what America was supposed to be all about.

I will offer an account of the Jeffersonian tradition from the perspective of the Social Democratic left.