Nonetheless, I still adhere to a vision of things that includes the premise of human progress. Looking at things as scientifically as we can, and conducting our public affairs in the most democratic of terms, are basics of any progressive outlook. We have the ability to ennoble ourselves, as well as to grovel with the most debased of our instincts. The Free Market debases the best in our culture, and at its worse will lead to the horrors of fascism. 

But there was also the Gulag.

It was socialism's misfortune to have had its first trial run in the Czar's Russia. Had socialism evolved in Germany where it almost triumphed over capitalism, but instead failed, opening the way for fascism history would have been quite different. Thousands of socialists were elected to office, including the mayorships and councilmanic posts of some good-sized American cities, in 1912. I have written the story of how socialism and organized labor were then defeated by General Harrison Gray Otis and his Los Angeles Times in "Bread & Hyacinths: The Rise and Fall of Utopian Los Angeles." I believe that the combination of socialism and democracy, based on a rationalist, scientific base, would have turned the United States into a paradise.

But I promise no cheap philosophy here. A big part of me would like to do what Rush Limbaugh does, and proclaim my views to the millions. But even if I were as articulate and slick as he is, which I'm not, it would never happen. The left has been barred from national dialogue in this country for now. Still, I’ll give Rush Limbaugh some ammunition with which to attack me. I’ll tell you about my times in the Communist Party.

In the ‘50s and ‘60s I grew up as the essential West Los Angeles kid, but I was always fascinated by small-town America because that was where the soul of the country is. The Los Angeles where I grew up in the ‘50s was a smaller place than it is today, not in land mass but in population. Besides, as a young man, I spent most of my summers and winter vacations at my grandparents’ house in Los Gatos. Los Gatos was a small northern California town near San Jose, and in my childhood it was characterized by orange orchards, not Silicon Valley industries. There was an old fashioned Greyhound bus depot, thriving because the train from San Jose to Santa Cruz with a stopover in Los Gatos had ceased running not too long before. There was a bakery, a fruit and vegetable stand, and a butcher, and the proprietors knew their customers by name. ~~click here to continue