The old left, as Rorty describes, is the leftist group that demonstrates the willingness to build bridges. In Achieving Our Country he provides accounts or examples of willingness and trust to create precarious political movements with groups that do not have 100% alignment or common views on all issues to effect change. This requires compromise, pluralism, and willingness to collaborate with people that may have some viewpoints you disagree with in order to achieve common goods.

And again, I am not saying old left and new left is a generational distinction. There are plenty of young folks that fall into the old progressive left category. This article highlights that “18% of those aged 18-34 said the same [of being proud of country].”

Also took some time to open the book again, I think the terms he used were “Cultural Left” and “Progressive Left” but the description was the cultural left was a relatively newer position in Leftist politics. That newness of the cultural left had a lot do with response to things like the Vietnam war that were widely televised, and works by intellectuals like Michel Foucault that impacted how people reflect on their culture. Rorty’s heroes of the progressive left go back to Walt Whitman, John Dewey, James Baldwin. The Baldwin quote he borrows the book title from “If we- and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others- do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world.”