on the slightest provocation—had very little to do with tradition. They summed up the code of the cowboy, the man in flight from his ancestors, from his immediate family, and from everything that tied him down and limited his freedom of movement. Reagan played on the desire for order, continuity, responsibility, and discipline, but his program contained nothing that would satisfy that desire. On the contrary, his program aimed to promote economic growth and unregulated business enterprise, the very forces that have undermined tradition. A movement calling itself conservative might have been expected to associate itself with the demand for limits not only on economic growth but on the conquest of space, the technological conquest of the environment, and the ungodly ambition to acquire godlike powers over nature. Reaganites, however, condemned the demand for limits as another counsel of doom. "Free enterprisers," according to Burton Pines, an ideologue of the new right, "insist that the economy can indeed expand and as it does so, all society's members can ... increase their wealth."

These words crudely express the belief in progress that has dominated Anglo-American politics for the last two centuries. The idea of progress, contrary to received opinion, owes its appeal not to its millennial vision of the future but to the seemingly more realistic expectation that the expansion of productive forces can continue indefinitely. The history of liberalism—which includes a great deal that passes for conservatism as well—consists of variations on this underlying theme.

That "optimism" and "pessimism" remain the favorite categories of political debate indicates that the theme of progress is not yet played out. In the impending age of limits, however, it sounds increasingly hollow. We can begin to hear discordant voices, which always accompanied the celebration of progress as a kind of counterpoint but were usually drowned out by the principal voices. A closer study of the score—the history of progressive ideology and its critics—brings to the surface a more complicated texture, a richer and darker mixture of harmonies, not always euphonious by any means, than we have been accustomed to hear. It is the darker voices especially that speak to us now, not because they speak in tones of despair but because they help us to distinguish "optimism" from hope and thus give us the courage to confront the mounting difficulties that threaten to overwhelm us.

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