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Today's center-left Americans can find a usable past in the liberals of the New Deal and Civil Rights eras. They will search in vain for philosophical ancestors among the snobbish, nativist, technocratic, authoritarian, segregationist Progressives of the early 20th century.
This is a gross overstatement, bordering on slander. These characterizations don't hold for Louis Brandeis and Robert La Follette, just to think of two offhand. To say there is no "usable past" in the Progressive Era is nonsense.
To tell you the truth, my distaste for the term "liberal" dates back to the early 90s, when liberals did a fine job of their own tarnishing the term with no help needed from the right. I came associate it with the tedious identity politics and victimology that radiated out of Oberlin and Wesleyan at that time, with which I feel no affinity.
