The Achievement Of American Liberalism

The New Deal established the contours and character of modern American democracy. It created an anchor and a reference point for American liberal politics through the struggles for racial, gender, and economic equality in the five decades that followed it. Indeed, the ways that liberalism has changed in meaning since the New Deal provide a critical prism through which to understand twentieth-century politics. From the consensus liberalism of the war years to the strident liberalism of the sixties to the besieged liberalism of the eighties and through the more recent national debates about welfare reform and Social Security privatization, the prominent historians gathered here explore the convoluted history of the complex legacy of the New Deal and its continuing effect on the present. In its scope and variety of subjects, this book reflects the protean quality of American liberalism. Alan Brinkley focuses on the range of choices New Dealers faced. Alonzo Hamby traces the Democratic Party's evolving effort to incorporate New Deal traditions in the Cold War era. Richard Fried offers a fresh look at the impact of McCarthyism. Richard Polenberg situates Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, in a tradition of liberal thought. And Melvin Urosfsky shows how the Roosevelt Court set the legal dimensions within which the debate about the meaning of liberalism would be conducted for decades. Other subjects include the effect of the Holocaust on relations between American Jews and African Americans; the limiting effects of racial and gender attitudes on the potential for meaningful reform; and the lasting repercussions of the tumultuous 1960s. Provocative, illuminating and sure to raise questions for future study, The Achievement of American Liberalism testifies to a vibrant and vital field of inquiry.

Alan Brinkley, Melvin Urofsky, Harvard Sitkoff, and other leading scholars explore the liberal tradition in American politics, culture, and social relations.

Considering the role of alternate political traditions in liberalism's downfall, 'Liberalism and its Discontents' shows how historical interpretation has been a reflection of liberal assumptions.

Building A Democratic Political Order explores the dramatic changes in American politics that occurred during the 1930s and 1940s--including the growth of the federal government, the emergence of a new labor movement, the Cold War and domestic anti-Communism, and the opening of national political debate about civil rights. Democratic progressive liberalism recast American political institutions and discourses in ways that went well beyond what was expected in the early 1930s, and in forms strong enough to endure for several decades after Roosevelt's death.

Don't Blame Us traces the reorientation of modern liberalism and the Democratic Party away from their roots in labor union halls of northern cities to white-collar professionals in postindustrial high-tech suburbs, and casts new light on the importance of suburban liberalism in modern American political culture. Focusing on the suburbs along the high-tech corridor of Route 128 around Boston, Lily Geismer challenges conventional scholarly assessments of Massachusetts exceptionalism, the decline of liberalism, and suburban politics in the wake of the rise of the New Right and the Reagan Revolution in the 1970s and 1980s. Although only a small portion of the population, knowledge professionals in Massachusetts and elsewhere have come to wield tremendous political leverage and power. By probing the possibilities and limitations of these suburban liberals, this rich and nuanced account shows that—far from being an exception to national trends—the suburbs of Massachusetts offer a model for understanding national political realignment and suburban politics in the second half of the twentieth century.

In an era of promises to create smaller, more limited government, Americans often forget that the federal government has amassed an extraordinary record of successes over the past half century. Despite seemingly insurmountable odds, it helped rebuild Europe after World War II, conquered polio and other life-threatening diseases, faced down communism, attacked racial discrimination, reduced poverty among the elderly, and put men on the moon. In Government's Greatest Achievements, Paul C. Light explores the federal government's most successful accomplishments over the previous five decades and anticipates the most significant challenges of the next half century. While some successes have come through major legislation such as the 1965 Medicare Act, or large-scale efforts like the Apollo space program, most have been achieved through collections of smaller, often unheralded statutes. Drawing on survey responses from 230 historians and 220 political scientists at colleges and universities nationwide, Light ranks and summarizes the fifty greatest government achievements from 1944 to 1999. The achievements were ranked based on difficulty, importance, and degree of success. Through a series of twenty vignettes, he paints a vivid picture of the most intense government efforts to improve the quality of life both at home and abroad—from enhancing health care and workplace safety, to expanding home ownership, to improving education, to protecting endangered species, to strengthening the national defense. The book also examines how Americans perceive government's greatest achievements, and reveals what they consider to be its most significant failures. America is now calling on the government to resolve another complex, difficult problem: the defeat of terrorism. Light concludes by discussing this enormous task, as well as government's other greatest priorities for the next fifty years.

Few transformations in American politics have been as important as the integration of African Americans into the Democratic Party and the Republican embrace of racial policy conservatism. The story of this partisan realignment on race is often told as one in which political elites—such as Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater—set in motion a dramatic and sudden reshuffling of party positioning on racial issues during the 1960s. Racial Realignment instead argues that top party leaders were actually among the last to move, and that their choices were dictated by changes that had already occurred beneath them. Drawing upon rich data sources and original historical research, Eric Schickler shows that the two parties' transformation on civil rights took place gradually over decades. Schickler reveals that Democratic partisanship, economic liberalism, and support for civil rights had crystallized in public opinion, state parties, and Congress by the mid-1940s. This trend was propelled forward by the incorporation of African Americans and the pro-civil-rights Congress of Industrial Organizations into the Democratic coalition. Meanwhile, Republican partisanship became aligned with economic and racial conservatism. Scrambling to maintain existing power bases, national party elites refused to acknowledge these changes for as long as they could, but the civil rights movement finally forced them to choose where their respective parties would stand. Presenting original ideas about political change, Racial Realignment sheds new light on twentieth and twenty-first century racial politics.

American liberalism has much to be proud of. It is largely responsible for the democratization of political power during the nineteenth century and the harnessing of buccaneer capitalism, for the New Deal's social safety nets and the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. But as the social agenda—and perceived snobbery—of postsixties liberalism alienated the working classes whose interests liberalism had previously championed, "liberal" soon became a dirty word on the political landscape. Noted scholar Thomas Spragens seeks to uncover the animating purposes, changes, problems, and prospects of liberalism as it is understood in today's political discourse. For if liberalism is to regain its rightful standing, he argues, it needs to recover its populist heart-to recommit itself to the ideal of government of, by, and for the people envisioned by Lincoln. Blending political theory with astute analysis of the contemporary scene, Spragens steps back from the "high liberalism" of John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and others, arguing instead that the success of liberalism hinges upon its recognition of the limits of social justice and its rededication to the core values of popular self-rule and universal self-realization—especially the capacity of ordinary citizens for personal development through education, occupation, and the practice of politics itself. Spragens first offers a detailed account of the contrast between the older and more recent versions of liberal public philosophy and considers the causes of these political philosophical transformations. He then examines the problematic aspects of contemporary liberalism and provides suggestions for a reoriented social agenda that is more compelling morally and more appealing politically. He concludes by addressing liberals' legitimate concerns about advancing social equality, their worries about imposing values in a pluralistic society, and their fears regarding the possible dangers of self-rule. Forcefully argued and well grounded within recent debates in political philosophy, Getting the Left Right compellingly argues that if twenty-first century liberalism defines its main mission as the egalitarian reallocation of social resources, it will doom itself to political futility and defeat. But if it instead champions the achievement of a society in which all democratic citizens can govern themselves and lead fulfilling lives, it can write a bright new chapter in its illustrious career.