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This paper traces out the connections between political theory and political commentary through an analysis of the relationship between the editorial stance of Dissent magazine and the academic work of its staff, in particular that of Irving Howe and Michael Walzer. It argues that central to the political thought of the Dissent circle was a rejection of the ideological puritanism of the magazine's critics, targets, and interlocutors, both academic and public intellectual. Dissent's major theoretical contribution was to try to work out a space for a policy-oriented platform that draws upon the best that competing political ideologies have to offer while transcending them. Thus, Howe and Michael Harrington sought a socialism that drew upon valuable liberal insights and socialized them, while Walzer looked for a permanent uneasy co-existence between liberalism, social democracy, and communitarianism. I situate Walzer's famous article "The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism" as an intellectual descendant of Howe's Socialism and America, seeking to extend that work, which offered articles of conciliation between liberalism and socialism, to incorporate communitarianism too. In staking out this position, the Dissent circle made valuable contributions to the practice of both activist politics and political theory throughout the period between the magazine's establishment in 1953 and the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]