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This work advances an original thesis that challenges the dominant schools of thought concerning the liberal tradition in the US.

The Liberal Tradition in America is truly an exceptional book. Its conceptual framework has been widely criticized as wrongheaded, and each of its organizing theses has been held to be historically inaccurate. Nonetheless, it continues to figure as a central text for scholars in political studies and American studies. We teach it regularly in graduate seminars, allow the problems it raises to shape our research agendas, and organize symposia to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of its publication. Indeed, it is tempting to suggest that, if nothing else, Louis Hartz long ago proved that it is more desirable to be interesting than to be right. To that end, I write here to register an appreciation of his work even as I acknowledge the aptness of much of the criticism to which it has been subjected. To my mind, a Hartz who has been refined and reframed by decades of criticism can still offer valuable insight into America and America's engagement with the world, particularly in a moment of caustic political and sharp economic divisions that would seem to belie the consensus he emphasized, and in the midst of the emergence of forthrightly illiberal doctrines shaping both American domestic and foreign policy.

In this article, the author argues that the illiberal context of the Cold War impacted the "storybook truth about American history" & the liberal tradition presented in Louis Hartz's The Liberal Tradition in America. The author interprets Hartz' work as a reaction to a pessimistic projection onto liberalism of undemocratic elements. The work is characterized as an example of Orren & Skowronecks institutional intercurrence reflecting tensions of pastlessness & historical moments, messianism & isolationism. The author concludes that as a post Cold War global state, a Hartzian rethinking & reworking of Americanism can use the mythology of pastlessness to advantage as the twentieth century disallows the dream state of American liberalism. J. Harwell