Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress—and How to Bring It Back

by Marc J. Dunkelman

if the details of these changes are important, they are downstream of how progressives understand the nature of their dilemma. The last major progressive pivot was born not from some technical epiphany or ideological breakthrough. Fundamentally, reformers beginning in the 1960s and 1970s shifted their policy agenda in response to a change in culture—in the progressive zeitgeist. The movement was reacting viscerally to evidence that the Establishment was rotten, as demonstrated by the carnage of war, the scourge of pesticides, the injustice of institutional racism, the corruption of Watergate, and more. It was only after the zeitgeist changed that reformers began to hammer out the Jeffersonian thrust that has prevailed over the last several decades. The movement had to behold the octopus before it could seek to manacle its tentacles.