SOURCE: “The Politics of Progress,” in Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. XXI, No. 4, fall, 1982, pp. 658-73.

In the following review of History of the Idea of Progress, Beauchamp dismisses Nisbet as a dishonest scholar and apologist for American business interests.

One Sunday evening in the course of his hapless presidency, Jimmy Carter took to our television screens to announce the dire news that we were losing our national faith—the faith in progress. “We've always believed,” he declared, “in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own. Our people are losing that faith.” Carter's intent was hardly objective historical analysis, but a political maneuver designed to rally the troops around the venerable banner of progress—which, in the good old days, was recognized to be unfightable. He also stated—coincidentally, no doubt—the thesis of Robert Nisbet's...