BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR. I've recently noticed nostalgia for the 1950s, particularly among self-styled "progressives." Now comes Howard Zinn, who would like to set the Wayback Machine^(TM) for the 1930s.

Still, in today’s climate of endless war and uncontrolled greed, drawing upon the heritage of the 1930s would be a huge step forward. Perhaps the momentum of such a project could carry the nation past the limits of FDR’s reforms, especially if there were a popular upsurge that demanded it. A candidate who points to the New Deal as a model for innovative legislation would be drawing on the huge reputation Franklin Roosevelt and his policies enjoy in this country, an admiration matched by no President since Lincoln. Imagine the response a Democratic candidate would get from the electorate if he or she spoke as follows:

“Our nation is in crisis, just as it was when Roosevelt took office. At that time, people desperately needed help, they needed jobs, decent housing, protection in old age. They needed to know that the government was for them and not just for the wealthy classes. This is what the American people need today.

Pedant's note: that admiration for Lincoln is a recent phenomenon. Visit the Lincoln Presidential Library to see what his defenders would characterize as Lincoln Derangement Syndrome, had they had the vocabulary.

On to the substance of Mr Zinn's article. A lack of decent housing, when brand new McMansions are available at foreclosure prices in many neighborhoods? (Puzzlement: why do realtors place a "Foreclosure" notice on their For Sale signs? Is it required by law in some states? I see it as a large invitation to drive a particularly hard bargain.) A lack of protection in old age, when Mr Roosevelt's Social "Security" is soon to run afoul of its actuarial design flaws, abetted by the propensity of Democratic Congresses to use the trust funds to mask the size of the annual deficit? Come off it.

“I will do what the New Deal did, to make up for the failure of the market system. It put millions of people to work through the Works Progress Administration, at all kinds of jobs, from building schools, hospitals, playgrounds, to repairing streets and bridges, to writing symphonies and painting murals and putting on plays. We can do that today for workers displaced by closed factories, for professionals downsized by a failed economy, for families needing two or three incomes to survive, for writers and musicians and other artists who struggle for security.

Note the conjuring tricks. Closed factories? Must public policy repeat the preservation of manufacturing for its own sake what it has done for farming? Two or three incomes to survive? How many times must I remind readers of the Say Aggregation Principle? Or perhaps Mr Zinn doesn't want female labor force participation rates to approach those of males. Writers and musicians and artists? Why ought their hobbies rate subsidies? Is it really a "failure" of the market system that MFAs and Ph.D.s in the evergreen disciplines fail to grasp the signal in their pitiful starting salaries and the paucity of tenure-track jobs? What gives the guitarist a claim on the public purse that a railway preservationist does not enjoy?

“The New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps at its peak employed 500,000 young people. They lived in camps, planted millions of trees, reclaimed millions of acres of land, built 97,000 miles of fire roads, protected natural habitats, restocked fish and gave emergency help to people threatened by floods.

“We can do that today, by bringing our soldiers home from war and from the military bases we have in 130 countries. We will recruit young people not to fight but to clean up our lakes and rivers, build homes for people in need, make our cities beautiful, be ready to help with disasters like Katrina. The military is having a hard time recruiting young men and women for war, and with good reason. We will have no such problem enlisting the young to build rather than destroy.

There he goes again with those houses. On that military recruitment, follow this and weigh the evidence. Then take a road trip to one of the national forests and note those Corps projects: monoculture tree farms particularly sucsceptible to pests or disease or fire. But the Brain Trust knows what's best.

“We can learn from the Social Security program and the GI Bill of Rights, which were efficient government programs, doing for older people and for veterans what private enterprise could not do. We can go beyond the New Deal, extending the principle of social security to health security with a totally free government-run health system. We can extend the GI Bill of Rights to a Civilian Bill of Rights, offering free higher education for all.

Lovely. Does that mean a two- or four-year degree for all? There are already inefficiently many people in college, with inefficiently much capacity devoted to access-assessment-remediation-retention, and he wishes to have more.

"We will have trillions of dollars to pay for these programs if we do two things: if we concentrate our taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population, not only their incomes but their accumulated wealth, and if we downsize our gigantic military machine, declaring ourselves a peaceful nation.

“We will not pay attention to those who complain that this is ‘big government.’ We have seen big government used for war and to give benefits to the wealthy. We will use big government for the people.”

If there is any consolation, the true believers appending favorable comments to the post are even sillier than Mr Zinn.