Miles to Go: Personal History of Social Policy

by Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Book cover for Miles to Go

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Has liberalism lost its way - or merely its voice? This book breaks the silence that has greeted the Republican Party's revolution of 1994. When voters handed Democrats their worst defeat in 100 years, New Yorkers returned Daniel Patrick Moynihan to the Senate for his fourth term. Amid the wreck of his party's control and the disarray of programmes and policies he has championed for three decades, Senator Moynihan here takes stock of the politics, economics and social problems that have brought America to this pass. He offers a wide-ranging meditation on the nation's social strategies since the 1940s, as well as a vision for the years to come. Because Senator Moynihan has long been a defender on the policies whose fortunes he follows here, "Miles to Go" is in a sense autobiographical, an account of the social life of the body politic. As it guides us through government's attempts to grapple with thorny problems like family disintegration, welfare, health care, deviance and addiction, Moynihan writes of "the coming of age of American social policy".
Through most of American history social policy has dealt with issues that first arose in Europe, and essentially followed European models. Now, in a post-industrial society America faces issues that first appear in the United States for which responses have to be devised. "Mile to Go" asks "why liberalism cannot be taught what conservatives seem to know instinctively" - to heed the political and moral sentiments of the people and reshape itself for the coming age.
  • ISBN10 0674574400
  • ISBN13 9780674574403
  • Publish Date 1 October 1996
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 15 September 2009
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint Harvard University Press
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 256
  • Language English