Paul Goodman was well known in his day not as a short-story writer, novelist, or poet but as a political thinker and social critic. He was widely regarded as the leading philosopher of the "New Left," and beginning with Growing Up Absurd (1960) he published many books popular with young radicals. His call for a return to what he thought of as the radical democracy of Thomas Jefferson was understood by the young as reclaiming their alienated birthright. Goodman gave the youth movement chapter and verse for a faith it already had.

Although Goodman believed his country had fallen into a terrible pathology of power, he loved Americans for their homespun virtues: prudence, courage, loyalty, dutifulness, frugality, temperance, honesty, self-reliance, and common sense. This heritage went deep in the national character, and Goodman refused to give it up. At the same time, he regarded himself as a citizen of...