Modern American liberalism
Encyclopedia
Modern American liberalism is a form of liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

 developed from progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...

 ideals such as Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

's New Nationalism
New Nationalism
New Nationalism was Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive political philosophy during the 1912 election.-Overview:Roosevelt made the case for what he called the New Nationalism in a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, on August 31, 1910...

, Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...

's New Freedom
The New Freedom
The New Freedom comprises the campaign speeches and promises of Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential campaign. They called for less government, but in practice as president he added new controls such as the Federal Reserve System and the Clayton Antitrust Act. More generally the "New Freedom" is...

, Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

's New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

, John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

's New Frontier
New Frontier
The term New Frontier was used by Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech in the 1960 United States presidential election to the Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as the Democratic slogan to inspire America to support him...

, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States promoted by President Lyndon B. Johnson and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice...

. It combines social liberalism
Social liberalism
Social liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it believes the legitimate role of the state includes addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding...

 and social progressivism with support for a welfare state
Welfare state
A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those...

 and a mixed economy
Mixed economy
Mixed economy is an economic system in which both the state and private sector direct the economy, reflecting characteristics of both market economies and planned economies. Most mixed economies can be described as market economies with strong regulatory oversight, in addition to having a variety...

. American liberal causes include voting rights for African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

s, abortion rights for women, gay rights and government entitlements such as education and health care.

Keynesian economic theory
Keynesian economics
Keynesian economics is a school of macroeconomic thought based on the ideas of 20th-century English economist John Maynard Keynes.Keynesian economics argues that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes and, therefore, advocates active policy responses by the...

 has played a central role in the economic philosophy of American liberals. The argument has been that national prosperity requires government management of the macroeconomy, to keep unemployment low, inflation in check, and growth high.

John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

 defined a liberal as follows:
Modern liberals value relative equality supported by institutions that defend against extreme economic inequality. They believe in democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law.; they point to the widespread prosperity enjoyed under a mixed economy in the years since World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. They believe liberty exists when access to necessities like education, health care and opportunity are available to all, and they champion the protection of the environment. Modern American liberalism is typically associated with the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

.

How voters identify themselves has been fairly stable over the last two decades. As of August 2011, 19% of American voters identify themselves as liberals, 38% as moderates and 41% as conservatives. In 1992, 40% identified as moderates, 35% as conservative and 18% as liberal. However, most Americans support liberal positions in opposition to cuts in entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, and oppose stripping public workers of the right to unionize.

21st century issues

In early 21st century political discourse in the United States, liberalism has come to include support for reproductive rights for women, including abortion, affirmative action for minority groups historically discriminated against, multilateralism
Multilateralism
Multilateralism is a term in international relations that refers to multiple countries working in concert on a given issue.International organizations, such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization are multilateral in nature...

 and support for international institutions, support for individual rights over corporate interests, support for universal health care for Americans (with a "single payer" option), and opposition to tax cuts for the rich.

American versus European use of the term "liberalism"

Today the word "liberalism" is used differently in different countries. One of the greatest contrasts is between the usage in the United States and usage in Continental Europe. According to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. was an American historian and social critic whose work explored the American liberalism of political leaders including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian"...

 (writing in 1956), "Liberalism in the American usage has little in common with the word as used in the politics of any European country, save possibly Britain." In continental Europe, liberalism usually means what is sometimes called classical liberalism
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....

, a commitment to limited government
Limited government
Limited government is a government which anything more than minimal governmental intervention in personal liberties and the economy is generally disallowed by law, usually in a written constitution. It is written in the United States Constitution in Article 1, Section 8...

 and laissez-faire
Laissez-faire
In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....

 economics, and more closely corresponds to the American definition of libertarianism
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...

—itself a term which in Europe is instead often applied to left-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism names several related but distinct approaches to politics, society, culture, and political and social theory, which stress equally both individual freedom and social justice.-Schools of thought:...

.

Demographics of American liberals

Self-identified liberals are the smallest ideological bloc in the US. They make up about 20% of the American population, with roughly 6% identifying as very liberal. Over the last two decades, the proportion of both liberals and conservatives have increased, while those self-identifying as moderates have decreased.

According to surveys by the New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 and CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...

, between 18% and 27% of American adults identify as liberal, versus moderate or conservative. In recent presidential elections, exit polls show that roughly 20% of the electorate self-identified as "liberal," and, the vast majority of liberals voted in favor of the Democrats
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

.

A Pew Research Center study found that liberals were the most educated ideological demographic and were tied with the conservative sub-group, the "Enterprisers", for the most affluent group. Of those who identified as liberal, 49% were college graduates and 41% had household incomes exceeding $75,000, compared to 27% and 28% as the national average, respectively. Liberalism has become the dominant political ideology in academia, with 44-62% identifying as liberal, depending on the exact wording of the survey. This compares with 40-46% liberal identification in surveys from 1969-1984. The social sciences
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...

 and humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....

 were most liberal, whereas business and engineering departments were the least liberal, though even in the business departments, liberals outnumbered conservatives by two to one.

Polls have found that young Americans are considerably more liberal than the general population.

History of modern liberalism in the United States

Scholar of liberalism Arthur Schlesinger Jr., writing in 1956, said that liberalism in the United States includes both a "laissez-faire
Laissez-faire
In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....

" form and a "government intervention
Economic interventionism
Economic interventionism is an action taken by a government in a market economy or market-oriented mixed economy, beyond the basic regulation of fraud and enforcement of contracts, in an effort to affect its own economy...

" form. He holds that liberalism in the United States is aimed toward achieving "equality of opportunity for all" but it is the means of achieving this that changes depending on the circumstances. He says that the "process of redefining liberalism in terms of the social needs of the 20th century was conducted by Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

 and his New Nationalism
New Nationalism
New Nationalism was Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive political philosophy during the 1912 election.-Overview:Roosevelt made the case for what he called the New Nationalism in a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, on August 31, 1910...

, Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...

 and his New Freedom
The New Freedom
The New Freedom comprises the campaign speeches and promises of Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential campaign. They called for less government, but in practice as president he added new controls such as the Federal Reserve System and the Clayton Antitrust Act. More generally the "New Freedom" is...

, and Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

 and his New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

. Out of these three reform periods there emerged the conception of a social welfare state
Welfare state
A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those...

, in which the national government had the express obligation to maintain high levels of employment in the economy, to supervise standards of life and labor, to regulate the methods of business competition, and to establish comprehensive patterns of social security."

Some make the distinction between "American classical liberalism" and the "new liberalism
New liberalism
New Liberalism is a book by Matthew Kalkman that examines the evolution of Liberalism from its early beginnings to its potential future incarnations. The author argues that New Liberalism is the next step in this evolution: the notion that, in order for a society to be maintained and to evolve, it...

."

Early modern liberalism

Rossinow (2008) traces the history of the close relations between liberals and the Left, starting in the 1880s, peaking in the 1930s, and ending in the 1940s. In the 1880s intellectual reformers typified by sociologist Lester Frank Ward
Lester Frank Ward
Lester F. Ward was an American botanist, paleontologist, and sociologist. He served as the first president of the American Sociological Association.-Biography:...

 transformed Victorian liberalism, retaining its commitment to civil liberties and individual rights while casting off its advocacy of laissez-faire economics. They at times supported the growing working-class labor unions, and sometimes even the socialists to their left. These liberals rallied behind Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

, Robert LaFollette
Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
Robert Marion "Fighting Bob" La Follette, Sr. , was an American Republican politician. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was the Governor of Wisconsin, and was also a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin...

 and Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...

 to fight big trusts (big corporations). They stressed ideals of social justice and the use of government to solve social and economic problems. Women such as Jane Addams
Jane Addams
Jane Addams was a pioneer settlement worker, founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace...

 and Florence Kelley
Florence Kelley
Florence Kelley was an American social and political reformer. Her work against sweatshops and for the minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, and children's rights is widely regarded today.-Family:...

 were among the leaders of the left-liberal tradition. There was a tension between sympathy with labor unions and the goal to apply scientific expertise by disinterested experts. When liberals became anti-Communist in the 1940s they purged leftists from the liberal movement.

Sociologist Lester Frank Ward
Lester Frank Ward
Lester F. Ward was an American botanist, paleontologist, and sociologist. He served as the first president of the American Sociological Association.-Biography:...

 (1841–1913) was a key intellectual and the first to effectively combine classical liberal theory with progressivism to help define what would become the modern welfare state after 1933.

Political writer Herbert Croly
Herbert Croly
Herbert David Croly was an intellectual leader of the Progressive Movement as an editor, and political philosopher and a co-founder of the magazine The New Republic in early twentieth-century America...

 (1869–1930) helped to define the new liberalism through the New Republic magazine (1914–present), and numerous influential books. Croly presented the case for a planned economy, increased spending on education, and the creation of a society based on the "brotherhood of mankind." His highly influential 1909 book The Promise of American Life
The Promise of American Life
The Promises of American Life is a book published by Herbert Croly, founder of The New Republic, in 1909. This book opposed aggressive unionization and supported economic planning to raise general quality of life...

proposed to raise the general standard of living by means of economic planning; Croly opposed aggressive unionization. In The Techniques of Democracy
The Techniques of Democracy
The Techniques of Democracy is a book written by Herbert Croly, founder of the magazine The New Republic. It was published in 1942 by New York City publishers Duell, Sloan and Pearce. In this book, Croly argues against both dogmatic individualism and dogmatic socialism....

(1915) he argued against both dogmatic individualism and dogmatic socialism.

Liberal Republicans

The Republican Party had a liberal element, typified in the early 20th century by Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

 in the 1907-1912 period (Roosevelt was more conservative at other points). Other liberal Republicans included Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
Robert Marion "Fighting Bob" La Follette, Sr. , was an American Republican politician. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was the Governor of Wisconsin, and was also a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin...

 and his sons in Wisconsin (from about 1900 to 1946), and western leaders such as Senator Hiram Johnson
Hiram Johnson
Hiram Warren Johnson was a leading American progressive and later isolationist politician from California; he served as the 23rd Governor from 1911 to 1917, and as a United States Senator from 1917 to 1945.-Early life:...

 in California, Senator George W. Norris in Nebraska, Senator Bronson M. Cutting
Bronson M. Cutting
Bronson Murray Cutting was a United States Senator from New Mexico, publisher, and military attaché.-Biography:Bronson Cutting was born in Great River, Long Island, New York, on June 23, 1888 at his family's country seat of Westbrook. He was the third of four children born to William Bayard...

 in New Mexico, Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Pickering Rankin was the first woman in the US Congress. A Republican, she was elected statewide in Montana in 1916 and again in 1940. A lifelong pacifist, she voted against the entry of the United States into both World War I in 1917 and World War II in 1941, the only member of Congress...

 in Montana, and Senator William Borah in Idaho. They were generally liberal in domestic policy, supported unions, and supported much of the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

, but were isolationist in foreign policy. This element died out by the 1940s. Starting in the 1930s a number of Northeastern Republicans took liberal positions regarding labor unions, spending and New Deal policies. They included Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in New York City, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, Governor Earl Warren
Earl Warren
Earl Warren was the 14th Chief Justice of the United States.He is known for the sweeping decisions of the Warren Court, which ended school segregation and transformed many areas of American law, especially regarding the rights of the accused, ending public-school-sponsored prayer, and requiring...

 of California, Senator Clifford P. Case
Clifford P. Case
Clifford Philip Case was an American lawyer and Republican Party politician who represented in the United States House of Representatives and the State of New Jersey in the United States Senate .-Biography:Clifford P. Case was born in Franklin Park in Somerset County, New Jersey...

 of New Jersey, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. was a Republican United States Senator from Massachusetts and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, South Vietnam, West Germany, and the Holy See . He was the Republican nominee for Vice President in the 1960 Presidential election.-Early life:Lodge was born in Nahant,...

 of Massachusetts, Senator Prescott Bush
Prescott Bush
Prescott Sheldon Bush was a Wall Street executive banker and a United States Senator, representing Connecticut from 1952 until January 1963. He was the father of George H. W. Bush and the grandfather of George W...

 of Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

 (father of George H. W. Bush), Senator Jacob K. Javits
Jacob K. Javits
Jacob Koppel "Jack" Javits was a politician who served as United States Senator from New York from 1957 to 1981. A liberal Republican, he was originally allied with Governor Nelson Rockefeller, fellow U.S...

 of New York, Governor William Scranton
William Scranton
William Warren Scranton is a former U.S. Republican Party politician. Scranton served as the 38th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1963 to 1967. From 1976 to 1977, he served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations.-Early life:...

 of Pennsylvania, and Governor George Romney
George W. Romney
George Wilcken Romney was an American businessman and Republican Party politician. He was chairman and CEO of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962, the 43rd Governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, and the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1969 to 1973...

 of Michigan. The most notable of them all was Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York.

While the media sometimes called them Rockefeller Republican
Rockefeller Republican
Rockefeller Republican refers to a faction of the United States Republican Party who held moderate to liberal views similar to those of Nelson Rockefeller...

s, the liberal Republicans never formed an organized movement or caucus, and lacked a recognized leader. They promoted economic growth and high state and federal spending, while accepting high taxes and much liberal legislation, with the proviso they could administer it more efficiently. They opposed the Democratic big city machines while welcoming support from labor unions and big business alike. Religion and social issues were not high on their agenda. In foreign policy they were internationalists, throwing their support to Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...

 over the conservative leader Robert A. Taft in 1952. They were often called the "Eastern Establishment" by conservatives such as Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr...

  The Goldwater conservatives fought this establishment, defeated Rockefeller in the 1964 primaries, and eventually retired most of its members, although some became Democrats like Senator Charles Goodell
Charles Goodell
Charles Ellsworth Goodell was a U.S. Representative and a Senator from New York, notable for coming into both offices under special circumstances following the deaths of his predecessors.-Early life and education:...

 and Mayor John Lindsay
John Lindsay
John Vliet Lindsay was an American politician, lawyer and broadcaster who was a U.S. Congressman, Mayor of New York City, candidate for U.S...

 in New York. As President, Richard Nixon adopted many of their positions. After Congressman John B. Anderson
John B. Anderson
John Bayard Anderson is a former United States Congressman and Presidential candidate from Illinois. He was a U.S. Representative from the 16th Congressional District of Illinois for ten terms from 1961 through 1981 and an Independent candidate in the 1980 presidential election. He was previously...

 of Illinois bolted the party in 1980 and ran as an independent against Reagan, the liberal GOP element faded away. Their old strongholds in the Northeast are now mostly held by Democrats.

The New Deal

President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

 came to office in 1933 amid the economic calamity of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

, offering the nation a New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

 intended to alleviate economic desperation and joblessness, provide greater opportunities, and restore prosperity. His presidency from 1933 to 1945, the longest in US history, was marked by an increased role for the federal government in addressing the nation's economic and social problems. Work relief programs provided jobs, ambitious projects such as the Tennessee Valley Authority
Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected...

 were created to promote economic development, and a social security
Social security
Social security is primarily a social insurance program providing social protection or protection against socially recognized conditions, including poverty, old age, disability, unemployment and others. Social security may refer to:...

 system was established. The Great Depression dragged on through the early and middle 1930s, showing some signs of relief later in the decade, though full recovery didn't come until the total mobilization
Mobilization
Mobilization is the act of assembling and making both troops and supplies ready for war. The word mobilization was first used, in a military context, in order to describe the preparation of the Prussian army during the 1850s and 1860s. Mobilization theories and techniques have continuously changed...

 of US economic, social, and military resources for the Allied cause in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. The New Deal programs to relieve the Depression are generally regarded as a mixed success in ending the nation's economic problems on a macroeconomic level. Still, although fundamental economic indicators may have remained depressed, the programs of the New Deal were extremely popular, as they improved the life of the common citizen, by providing jobs for the unemployed, legal protection for labor unionists, modern utilities for rural America, living wages for the working poor, and price stability for the family farmer. Economic progress for minorities, however, was hindered by discrimination, an issue often avoided by Roosevelt's administration.

The New Deal consisted of three types of programs designed to produce "Relief, Recovery and Reform":
Relief was the immediate effort to help the one-third of the population that was hardest hit by the depression. Roosevelt expanded Hoover's FERA work relief program, and added the Civilian Conservation Corps
Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families, ages 18–25. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D...

 (CCC), Public Works Administration
Public Works Administration
The Public Works Administration , part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression...

 (PWA), and starting in 1935 the Works Progress Administration
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...

 (WPA). In 1935 the Social Security Act (SSA) and unemployment insurance programs were added. Separate programs were set up for relief in rural America, such as the Resettlement Administration
Resettlement Administration
The Resettlement Administration was a U.S. federal agency that, between April 1935 and December 1936, relocated struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal government....

 and Farm Security Administration
Farm Security Administration
Initially created as the Resettlement Administration in 1935 as part of the New Deal in the United States, the Farm Security Administration was an effort during the Depression to combat American rural poverty...

.

Recovery was the goal of restoring the economy to pre-Depression levels. It involved "pump priming" (greater spending of government funds in an effort to stimulate the economy, including deficit spending), dropping the gold standard
Gold standard
The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed mass of gold. There are distinct kinds of gold standard...

, and efforts to increase farm prices and foreign trade by lowering tariffs. Many programs were funded through a Hoover program of loans and loan guarantees, overseen by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation
Reconstruction Finance Corporation
The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was an independent agency of the United States government, established and chartered by the US Congress in 1932, Act of January 22, 1932, c. 8, 47 Stat. 5, during the administration of President Herbert Hoover. It was modeled after the War Finance Corporation...

 (RFC).

Reform was based on the assumption that the depression was caused by the inherent instability of the market and that government intervention was necessary to rationalize and stabilize the economy, and to balance the interests of farmers, business and labor. Reform measures included the National Industrial Recovery Act
National Industrial Recovery Act
The National Industrial Recovery Act , officially known as the Act of June 16, 1933 The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), officially known as the Act of June 16, 1933 The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), officially known as the Act of June 16, 1933 (Ch. 90, 48 Stat. 195, formerly...

 (NIRA), regulation of Wall Street by the Securities Exchange Act
Securities Exchange Act of 1934
The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 , , codified at et seq., is a law governing the secondary trading of securities in the United States of America. It was a sweeping piece of legislation...

 (SEA), the Agricultural Adjustment Act
Agricultural Adjustment Act
The Agricultural Adjustment Act was a United States federal law of the New Deal era which restricted agricultural production by paying farmers subsidies not to plant part of their land and to kill off excess livestock...

 (AAA) for farm programs, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is a United States government corporation created by the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933. It provides deposit insurance, which guarantees the safety of deposits in member banks, currently up to $250,000 per depositor per bank. , the FDIC insures deposits at...

 (FDIC) insurance for bank deposits enacted through the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, and the 1935 National Labor Relations Act
National Labor Relations Act
The National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act , is a 1935 United States federal law that limits the means with which employers may react to workers in the private sector who create labor unions , engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in...

 (NLRA) (also known as the Wagner Act) dealing with labor-management relations. Despite urgings by some New Dealers, there was no major anti-trust program. Roosevelt opposed socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 (in the sense of state ownership of the means of production), and only one major program, the Tennessee Valley Authority
Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected...

 (TVA), involved government ownership of the means of production (that is power plants and electrical grids). The conservatives feared the New Deal meant socialism; Roosevelt noted privately in 1934 that the "old line press harps increasingly on state socialism and demands the return to the good old days."

The New Deal's record came under attack by New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...

 historians for its pusillanimity in not attacking capitalism more vigorously, nor helping blacks achieve equality. The critics emphasize the absence of a philosophy of reform to explain the failure of New Dealers to attack fundamental social problems. They demonstrate the New Deal's commitment to save capitalism and its refusal to strip away private property. They detect a remoteness from the people and indifference to participatory democracy, and call instead for more emphasis on conflict and exploitation.

Foreign policies of FDR

In international affairs, Roosevelt's presidency until 1938 reflected the isolationism that dominated practically all of American politics at the time. After 1938 he moved toward interventionism as the world hurtled toward war Liberals split on foreign policy: many followed Roosevelt, while others like John L. Lewis
John L. Lewis
John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960...

 of the CIO, historian Charles A. Beard
Charles A. Beard
Charles Austin Beard was, with Frederick Jackson Turner, one of the most influential American historians of the first half of the 20th century. He published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science...

 and the Kennedy Family
Kennedy family
In the United States, the phrase Kennedy family commonly refers to the family descending from the marriage of the Irish-Americans Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald that was prominent in American politics and government. Their political involvement has revolved around the...

 opposed him. However, Roosevelt added new conservative supporters, such as Republicans Henry Stimson who became his Secretary of War in 1940 and Wendell Willkie
Wendell Willkie
Wendell Lewis Willkie was a corporate lawyer in the United States and a dark horse who became the Republican Party nominee for the president in 1940. A member of the liberal wing of the GOP, he crusaded against those domestic policies of the New Deal that he thought were inefficient and...

, who worked closely with FDR after losing to him in the 1940s election. Anticipating the post-war period, Roosevelt strongly supported proposals to create a United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 organization as a means of encouraging mutual cooperation to solve problems on the international stage. His commitment to internationalist ideals was in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...

, except that FDR learned from Wilson's mistakes regarding the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...

; FDR included Republicans in shaping foreign policy, and insisted the U.S. have a veto at the UN.

Liberalism during the Cold War

American liberalism of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 era was the immediate heir to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

 and the somewhat more distant heir to the Progressives
Progressive Era
The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political...

 of the early 20th century. Rossinow (2008) argues that after 1945 the left-liberal alliance that operated during the New Deal years split apart for good over the issue of Communism. Anti-communist liberals, led by Walter Reuther
Walter Reuther
Walter Philip Reuther was an American labor union leader, who made the United Automobile Workers a major force not only in the auto industry but also in the Democratic Party in the mid 20th century...

 and Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...

 expelled the far-left from labor unions and the New Deal Coalition
New Deal coalition
The New Deal Coalition was the alignment of interest groups and voting blocs that supported the New Deal and voted for Democratic presidential candidates from 1932 until the late 1960s. It made the Democratic Party the majority party during that period, losing only to Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952...

, and committed the Democratic Party to a strong Cold War policy typified by NATO and the containment of Communism. Liberals became committed to a quantitative goal of economic growth that accepted large near-monopolies such as General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...

 and ATT
American Telephone & Telegraph
AT&T Corp., originally American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American telecommunications company that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies. AT&T is the oldest telecommunications company...

, while rejecting the structural transformation dreamed of by earlier left-liberals. The far left had its last hurrah in Henry A. Wallace
Henry A. Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States , the Secretary of Agriculture , and the Secretary of Commerce . In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.-Early life:Henry A...

’s 1948 third-party presidential campaign. Wallace supported further New Deal reforms and opposed the Cold War, but his campaign was taken over by the far left and Wallace retired from politics in disgust.

Most prominent and constant among the positions of Cold War liberalism were:
  • Support for a domestic economy built on a balance of power between labor (in the form of organized unions
    Trade union
    A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

    ) and management (with a tendency to be more interested in large corporations than in small business
    Small business
    A small business is a business that is privately owned and operated, with a small number of employees and relatively low volume of sales. Small businesses are normally privately owned corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships...

    ).
  • A foreign policy focused on containing the Soviet Union and its allies.
  • The continuation and expansion of New Deal social welfare programs (in the broad sense of welfare, including programs such as Social Security
    Social Security (United States)
    In the United States, Social Security refers to the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program.The original Social Security Act and the current version of the Act, as amended encompass several social welfare and social insurance programs...

    ).
  • An embrace of Keynesian economics. By way of compromise with political groupings to their right, this often became, in practice, military Keynesianism
    Military Keynesianism
    Military Keynesianism is the accusation that John Maynard Keynes advocated government economic policy in which the government devotes large amounts of spending to the military in an effort to increase economic growth. In fact, the English economist John Maynard Keynes advocated that government...

    .


In some ways this resembled what in other countries was referred to as social democracy
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...

. However, unlike European social democrats, US liberals never widely endorsed nationalization
Nationalization
Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...

 of industry but favored regulation for public benefit.

In the 1950s and 1960s, both major US political parties included liberal and conservative factions. The Democratic Party had two wings: on the one hand, Northern and Western liberals, on the other generally conservative Southern whites. Difficult to classify were the northern big city Democratic "political machine
Political machine
A political machine is a political organization in which an authoritative boss or small group commands the support of a corps of supporters and businesses , who receive rewards for their efforts...

s". The urban machines had supported New Deal economic policies, but faded with the coming of prosperity and the assimilation of ethnic groups; nearly all collapsed by the 1960s in the face of racial violence in the cities

The Republican Party included the moderate-to-liberal Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...

 and the moderate-to-conservative Main Street
Main Street
Main Street is the metonym for a generic street name of the primary retail street of a village, town, or small city in many parts of the world...

. The more liberal wing, strongest in the Northeast, was far more supportive of New Deal programs, labor unions, and an internationalist foreign policy.

Support for anti-Communism sometimes came at the expense of civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...

. For example, ADA co-founder and archetypal Cold War liberal Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...

 unsuccessfully sponsored (in 1950) a Senate bill to establish detention centers where those declared subversive by the President could be held without trial. Nonetheless, liberals opposed McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...

 and were central to McCarthy's downfall.

Truman's Fair Deal

Until he became president liberals generally did not see Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

 as one of their own, viewing him as a Democratic Party hack. However, liberal politicians and liberal organizations such as the unions and Americans for Democratic Action
Americans for Democratic Action
Americans for Democratic Action is an American political organization advocating progressive policies. ADA works for social and economic justice through lobbying, grassroots organizing, research and supporting progressive candidates.-History:...

 (ADA) supported Truman's liberal Fair Deal proposals to continue and expand the New Deal. Hamby argues that the Fair Deal reflected the "vital center" approach to liberalism which rejected totalitarianism, was suspicious of excessive concentrations of government power, and honored the New Deal as an effort to achieve a progressive capitalist system. Solidly based upon the New Deal tradition in its advocacy of wide-ranging social legislation, the Fair Deal differed enough to claim a separate identity. The depression did not return after the war and the Fair Deal faced prosperity and an optimistic future. The Fair Dealers thought in terms of abundance rather than depression scarcity. Economist Leon Keyserling
Leon Keyserling
Leon Hirsch Keyserling was an American economist and lawyer. During his career he helped draft major pieces of New Deal legislation and advised President Harry S. Truman as head of the Council of Economic Advisers....

 argued that the liberal task was to spread the benefits of abundance throughout society by stimulating economic growth. Agriculture Secretary Charles F. Brannan
Charles F. Brannan
Charles Franklin Brannan was the Secretary of Agriculture from 1948 to 1953. He was born in Denver, Colorado, and received his law degree from the University of Denver law school in 1929...

 wanted to unleash the benefits of agricultural abundance and to encourage the development of an urban-rural Democratic coalition. However the "Brannan Plan" was defeated by strong conservative opposition in Congress and by his unrealistic confidence in the possibility uniting urban labor and farm owners who distrusted rural insurgency. The Korean War made military spending the nation's priority and killed almost the whole Fair Deal but did encourage the pursuit of economic growth. The Conservative Coalition
Conservative coalition
In the United States, the conservative coalition was an unofficial Congressional coalition bringing together the conservative majority of the Republican Party and the conservative, mostly Southern, wing of the Democratic Party...

 of Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans in Congress effectively blocked the Fair Deal and nearly all liberal legislation from the late 1930s to 1960.

New Left historians in the 1960s repudiated Truman for failing to carry forward the New Deal agenda, and for excessive anti-Communism at home.

1950s

Combating conservatism was not high on the liberal agenda, for by 1950 the liberal ideology was so intellectually dominant that the literary critic Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S...

 could note that "liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition... there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in circulation."

Most historians see liberalism in the doldrums in the 1950s, with the old spark of New Deal dreams overshadowed by the glitzy complacency and conservatism of the Eisenhower years. Adlai Stevenson lost in two landslides, and he presented few new liberal proposals apart from a suggestion for a worldwide ban on nuclear tests. As Barry Karl notes, Stevenson "has suffered more at hands of the admirers he failed than he ever did from the enemies who defeated him." Many liberals bemoan the willingness of Democratic leaders in Congress (Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...

 and Sam Rayburn
Sam Rayburn
Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn , often called "Mr. Sam," or "Mr. Democrat," was a Democratic lawmaker from Bonham, Texas, who served as the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives for seventeen years, the longest tenure in U.S. history.- Background :Rayburn was born in Roane County, Tennessee, and...

) to collaborate with Eisenhower, and the commitment of the AFL-CIO unions and most liberal spokesmen such as Senators Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...

 and Paul Douglas
Paul Douglas
Paul Howard Douglas was an liberal American politician and University of Chicago economist. A war hero, he was elected as a Democratic U.S. Senator from Illinois from in the 1948 landslide, serving until his defeat in 1966...

 to anti-Communism at home and abroad. They decry the weak attention most liberals paid to the nascent Civil Rights Movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...

.

The liberal coalition

Politically, starting in the late 1940s there was a powerful labor-liberal coalition with strong grassroots support, energetic well-funded organizations, and a cadre of supporters in Congress. On labor side was the American Federation of Labor
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...

 (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...

 (CIO), which merged into the AFL-CIO in 1955, the United Auto Workers
United Auto Workers
The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers , is a labor union which represents workers in the United States and Puerto Rico, and formerly in Canada. Founded as part of the Congress of Industrial...

 (UAW), union lobbyists, and the Committee on Political Education's (COPE), which organized turnout campaigns and publicity at elections. Walter Reuther
Walter Reuther
Walter Philip Reuther was an American labor union leader, who made the United Automobile Workers a major force not only in the auto industry but also in the Democratic Party in the mid 20th century...

 of the UAW was the leader of liberalism in the labor movement, and his autoworkers generously funded the cause

The main liberal organizations, out of hundreds, included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...

 (NAACP), the American Jewish Congress
American Jewish Congress
The American Jewish Congress describes itself as an association of Jewish Americans organized to defend Jewish interests at home and abroad through public policy advocacy, using diplomacy, legislation, and the courts....

 (AJC), the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...

 (ACLU), the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights , formerly called The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, is an umbrella group of American civil rights interest groups.-Organizational history:...

 (LCCR), the National Committee for an Effective Congress
National Committee for an Effective Congress
The National Committee for an Effective Congress is a political action committee founded by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948. It is one of the America’s most politically active independent liberal groups, pooling contributions from across the country to help elect progressive candidates to Congress...

 (NCEC), and the Americans for Democratic Action
Americans for Democratic Action
Americans for Democratic Action is an American political organization advocating progressive policies. ADA works for social and economic justice through lobbying, grassroots organizing, research and supporting progressive candidates.-History:...

 (ADA).

Key liberal leaders in Congress included Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...

 of Minnesota, Paul Douglas
Paul Douglas
Paul Howard Douglas was an liberal American politician and University of Chicago economist. A war hero, he was elected as a Democratic U.S. Senator from Illinois from in the 1948 landslide, serving until his defeat in 1966...

 of Illinois, Henry Jackson
Henry M. Jackson
Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson was a U.S. Congressman and Senator from the state of Washington from 1941 until his death...

 of Washington, Walter Mondale
Walter Mondale
Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale is an American Democratic Party politician, who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States , under President Jimmy Carter, and as a United States Senator for Minnesota...

 of Minnesota, and Claude Pepper
Claude Pepper
Claude Denson Pepper was an American politician of the Democratic Party, and a spokesman for left-liberalism and the elderly. In foreign policy he shifted from pro-Soviet in the 1940s to anti-Communist in the 1950s...

 of Florida in the Senate Leaders in the House included Representatives Frank Thompson
Frank Thompson
Frank Thompson, Jr. was a Democratic Party politician from New Jersey. Thompson represented in the United States House of Representatives from 1955 to 1980....

 of New Jersey, Richard Bolling of Missouri, and other members of the Democratic Study Group
Democratic study group
The Democratic Study Group is a legislative service organization in the United States House of Representatives. It was founded in 1959 "as a liberal counterpoint to the influence of senior conservatives and southern Democrats, it now consists of nearly all Democratic members of the House. Its...

. Although for years they had largely been frustrated by the Conservative Coalition
Conservative coalition
In the United States, the conservative coalition was an unofficial Congressional coalition bringing together the conservative majority of the Republican Party and the conservative, mostly Southern, wing of the Democratic Party...

, the liberal coalition suddenly came to power in 1963 and were ready with proposals that became central to the Great Society.

Intellectuals

Intellectuals and writers were an important component of the coalition at this point. Many writers—especially historians—became prominent spokesmen for liberalism and were frequently called upon for public lectures and for popular essays on political topics by such magazines as The New Republic, Saturday Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harpers. Also active in the arena of ideas were literary critics such as Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S...

 and Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic, many of whose writings depicted the immigrant experience in early twentieth century America....

, economists such as Alvin Hansen
Alvin Hansen
Alvin Harvey Hansen , often referred to as "the American Keynes," was a professor of economics at Harvard, a widely read author on current economic issues, and an influential advisor to the government who helped create the Council of Economic Advisors and the Social security system...

, John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith , OC was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism...

, James Tobin
James Tobin
James Tobin was an American economist who, in his lifetime, served on the Council of Economic Advisors and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and taught at Harvard and Yale Universities. He developed the ideas of Keynesian economics, and advocated government intervention to...

 and Paul Samuelson
Paul Samuelson
Paul Anthony Samuelson was an American economist, and the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Swedish Royal Academies stated, when awarding the prize, that he "has done more than any other contemporary economist to raise the level of scientific analysis in...

, as well as political scientists such as Robert A. Dahl
Robert A. Dahl
Robert Alan Dahl , is the Sterling Professor emeritus of political science at Yale University, where he earned his Ph.D. in political science in 1940. He is past president of the American Political Science Association...

 and Seymour Martin Lipset
Seymour Martin Lipset
Seymour Martin Lipset was an American political sociologist, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the Hazel Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University. His major work was in the fields of political sociology, trade union organization, social stratification, public opinion, and...

, and sociologists such as David Riesman
David Riesman
David Riesman , was a sociologist, attorney, and educator....

 and Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times . He declined to run for re-election in 2000...

. Representative was the historian Henry Steele Commager
Henry Steele Commager
Henry Steele Commager was an American historian who helped define Modern liberalism in the United States for two generations through his forty books and 700 essays and reviews...

, who felt a duty to teach his fellow citizens how liberalism was the foundation of American values. He believed that an educated public that understands American history would support liberal programs, especially internationalism and the New Deal. Commager was representative of a whole generation of like-minded historians who were widely read by the general public, including Allan Nevins
Allan Nevins
Allan Nevins was an American historian and journalist, renowned for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as President Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller.-Life:Born in Camp Point, Illinois, Nevins was educated at...

, Daniel Boorstin, Richard Hofstadter
Richard Hofstadter
Richard Hofstadter was an American public intellectual of the 1950s, a historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University...

, and C. Vann Woodward
C. Vann Woodward
Comer Vann Woodward was a preeminent American historian focusing primarily on the American South and race relations. He was considered, along with Richard Hofstadter and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to be one of the most influential historians of the postwar era, 1940s-1970s, both by scholars and by...

. Perhaps the most prominent of all was Arthur Schlesinger Jr. whose books on Andrew Jackson and on Roosevelt and the Kennedy brothers—and his many essays and his work with liberal organizations and in the White House itself under Kennedy—emphasized the ideological history of American liberalism, especially as made concrete by a long tradition of powerful liberal presidents.

Commager's biographer Neil Jumonville has argued that this style of influential public history has been lost in the 21st century because political correctness has rejected Commager's open marketplace of tough ideas. Jumonville says history now comprises abstruse deconstruction by experts, with statistics instead of stories, and is now comprehensible only to the initiated, while ethnocentrism rules in place of common identity. Other experts have traced the relative decline of intellectuals to their concern race, ethnicity, and gender, and scholarly antiquarianism.

Great Society: 1964-68

The climax of liberalism came in the mid-1960s with the success of President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...

 (1963–69) in securing congressional passage of his Great Society
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States promoted by President Lyndon B. Johnson and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice...

 programs, including civil rights, the end of segregation, Medicare, extension of welfare, federal aid to education at all levels, subsidies for the arts and humanities, environmental activism, and a series of programs designed to wipe out poverty. As recent historians have explained:
"Gradually, liberal intellectuals crafted a new vision for achieving economic and social justice. The liberalism of the early 1960s contained no hint of radicalism, little disposition to revive new deal era crusades against concentrated economic power, and no intention to fan class passions or redistribute wealth or restructure existing institutions. Internationally it was strongly anti-Communist. It aimed to defend the free world, to encourage economic growth at home, and to ensure that the resulting plenty was fairly distributed. Their agenda-much influenced by Keynesian economic theory-envisioned massive public expenditure that would speed economic growth, thus providing the public resources to fund larger welfare, housing, health, and educational programs."


Johnson was rewarded with an electoral landslide in 1964 against conservative Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr...

, which broke the decades-long control of Congress by the Conservative coalition
Conservative coalition
In the United States, the conservative coalition was an unofficial Congressional coalition bringing together the conservative majority of the Republican Party and the conservative, mostly Southern, wing of the Democratic Party...

. But the Republicans bounced back in 1966, and as the Democratic party splintered five ways, Republicans elected Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

 in 1968. Nixon largely continued the New Deal and Great Society programs he inherited; conservative reaction would come with the election of Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

 in 1980.

Liberals and civil rights

Cold War liberalism emerged at a time when most African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

s, especially in the South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

, were politically and economically disenfranchised. Beginning with To Secure These Rights, an official report issued by the Truman White House in 1947, self-proclaimed liberals increasingly embraced the civil rights movement. In 1948, President Truman desegregated the armed forces and the Democrats inserted a strong civil rights "plank" (provision) in the Democratic party platform. Black activists, most prominently Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...

, escalated the bearer agitation throughout the South, especially in Birmingham, Alabama, where brutal police tactics outraged national television audiences. The civil rights movement climaxed in the "March on Washington" in August, 1963, where King gave his dramatic "I Have a Dream" speech. The activism put civil rights at the very top of the liberal political agenda and facilitated passage of the decisive Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...

, which permanently ended segregation in the United States, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed blacks the right to vote, with strong enforcement provisions throughout the South handled by the federal Department of Justice.

During the mid 1960s, relations between white liberals and the civil rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...

 became increasingly strained; civil rights leaders accused liberal politicians of temporizing and procrastinating. Although President Kennedy sent federal troops to compel the University of Mississippi
University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1844, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford, four branch campuses located in Booneville, Grenada, Tupelo, and Southaven as well as the...

 to admit African American James Meredith
James Meredith
James H. Meredith is an American civil rights movement figure, a writer, and a political adviser. In 1962, he was the first African American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi, an event that was a flashpoint in the American civil rights movement. Motivated by President...

 in 1962, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...

 toned down the March on Washington
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was the largest political rally for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr...

 (1963) at Kennedy's behest, the failure to seat the delegate
Delegate
A delegate is a person who speaks or acts on behalf of an organization at a meeting or conference between organizations of the same level A delegate is a person who speaks or acts on behalf of an organization (e.g., a government, a charity, an NGO, or a trade union) at a meeting or conference...

s of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was an American political party created in the state of Mississippi in 1964, during the civil rights movement...

 at the 1964 Democratic National Convention
Democratic National Convention
The Democratic National Convention is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1832 by the United States Democratic Party. They have been administered by the Democratic National Committee since the 1852 national convention...

 indicated a growing rift. President Johnson could not understand why the rather impressive civil rights laws passed under his leadership had failed to immunize Northern and Western cities from rioting. At the same time, the civil rights movement itself was becoming fractured. By 1966, a Black Power
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...

 movement had emerged; Black Power advocates accused white liberals of trying to control the civil rights agenda. Proponents of Black Power wanted African-Americans to follow an "ethnic model" for obtaining power, not unlike that of Democratic political machines in large cities. This put them on a collision course with urban machine politicians. And, on its most extreme edges, the Black Power movement contained racial separatists who wanted to give up on integration altogether — a program that could not be endorsed by American liberals of any race. The mere existence of such individuals (who always got more media attention than their actual numbers might have warranted) contributed to "white backlash" against liberals and civil rights activists.

Paleoliberalism and neoconservatives

According to Michael Lind
Michael Lind
Michael Lind is an American writer. Currently Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., Editor of New American Contract and its blog Value Added, and a columnist for Salon magazine. Lind was a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School and...

, in the late 1960s and early 1970s many "anti-Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, pro-Israel liberals and social democrats
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...

, especially those around Commentary magazine
Commentary (magazine)
Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...

 as well as supporters of Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson
Henry M. Jackson
Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson was a U.S. Congressman and Senator from the state of Washington from 1941 until his death...

 helped found the neoconservative movement
Neoconservatism
Neoconservatism in the United States is a branch of American conservatism. Since 2001, neoconservatism has been associated with democracy promotion, that is with assisting movements for democracy, in some cases by economic sanctions or military action....

. Many joined the administrations of Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

 and George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

, and attacked liberalism vocally in the media and scholarly outlets.

Under attack from the New Left

Liberalism came under attack from both the New Left in the early 1960s and the right in the late 1960s. Kazin (1998) says, "The liberals who anxiously turned back the assault of the postwar Right were confronted in the 1960s by a very different adversary: a radical movement led, in the main, by their own children. The white New Left." This new element, says Kazin, worked to "topple the corrupted liberal order." Indeed, as Maurice Isserman notes, the New Left" "came to use the word 'liberal' as a political epithet."

The attack was not confined to the United States, as the New Left was a worldwide movement with strength in parts of Western Europe as well as Japan. Massive demonstrations in France, for example, denounced American imperialism and its "helpers" in Western European governments.

The main activity of the New Left became Opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War as conducted by liberal President Lyndon Johnson. The anti-war movement escalated the rhetorical heat, as violence broke out on both sides. The climax came in sustained protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Liberals fought back, with Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981....

, chief foreign policy advisor of the 1968 Humphrey campaign, saying the New Left "threatened American liberalism" in a manner reminiscent of McCarthyism. While the New Left considered Humphrey a war criminal, Nixon attacked him as the New Left's enabler—a man with "a personal attitude of indulgence and permissiveness toward the lawless." Beinart concludes that "with the country divided against itself, contempt for Hubert Humphrey was the one thing on which left and right could agree."

After 1968, the New Left lost strength and the more serious attacks on liberalism came from the right. Nevertheless the liberal ideology lost its attractiveness. Liberal commentator E. J. Dionne
E. J. Dionne
Eugene Joseph "E.J." Dionne, Jr. is an American journalist and political commentator, and a long-time op-ed columnist for The Washington Post...

 contends that, "If liberal ideology began to crumble intellectually in the 1960s it did so in part because the New Left represented a highly articulate and able wrecking crew."

Liberals and Vietnam

While the civil rights movement isolated liberals from their erstwhile allies, the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

 threw a wedge into the liberal ranks, dividing pro-war "hawks" such as Senator Henry M. Jackson
Henry M. Jackson
Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson was a U.S. Congressman and Senator from the state of Washington from 1941 until his death...

 from "doves" such as 1972 Presidential candidate Senator George McGovern
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....

. As the war became the leading political issue of the day, agreement on domestic matters was not enough to hold the liberal consensus together.

In the 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy was liberal in domestic policy but conservative on foreign policy, calling for a more aggressive stance against Communism than his opponent Richard Nixon.

Opposition to the war first emerged from the New Left and from black leaders such as Martin Luther King. By 1967, however, there was growing opposition from within liberal ranks, led in 1968 by Senators Eugene McCarthy
Eugene McCarthy
Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy was an American politician, poet, and a long-time member of the United States Congress from Minnesota. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971.In the 1968 presidential election, McCarthy was the first...

 and Robert Kennedy. After Democratic President Lyndon Johnson announced, in March 1968, that he would not run for reelection, Kennedy and McCarthy fought each other for the nomination, with Kennedy besting McCarthy in a series of Democratic primaries. Then assassination removed Kennedy from the race and Vice President Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...

 emerged from the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention
1968 Democratic National Convention
The 1968 Democratic National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party was held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, from August 26 to August 29, 1968. Because Democratic President Lyndon Johnson had announced he would not seek a second term, the purpose of the convention was to...

 with the presidential nomination of a deeply divided party. Meanwhile Alabama governor George Wallace
George Wallace
George Corley Wallace, Jr. was the 45th Governor of Alabama, serving four terms: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. "The most influential loser" in 20th-century U.S. politics, according to biographers Dan T. Carter and Stephan Lesher, he ran for U.S...

 announced his third-party run, and he pulled in many working class whites in the rural South and big city North, most of whom had been staunch Democrats. Liberals, led by the labor unions, focused their attacks on Wallace, while Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

 led a unified Republican Party to victory.

Nixon

The chaos of 1968, a bitterly divided Democratic Party, and bad blood between the new Left and the liberals, gave Nixon the presidency. Nixon rhetorically attacked liberals, but in practice he enacted many liberal policies and represented the more liberal wing of the GOP. Nixon established of the Environmental Protection Agency
United States Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...

 by executive order, expanded the national endowments for the arts and the humanities, began affirmative action policies, opened diplomatic relations with Communist China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

, starting the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty refers to two rounds of bilateral talks and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union—the Cold War superpowers—on the issue of armament control. There were two rounds of talks and agreements: SALT I and SALT...

 to reduce ballistic missile
Ballistic missile
A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the...

 availability, and turned the war over to South Vietnam. He withdrew all American combat troops by 1972, signed a peace treaty in 1973, and ended the draft. Regardless of his policies, liberals hated Nixon and rejoiced when the Watergate scandal forced his resignation in 1974.

While the differences between Nixon and the liberals are obvious – the liberal wing of his own party favored politicians such as Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 41st Vice President of the United States , serving under President Gerald Ford, and the 49th Governor of New York , as well as serving the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a variety of positions...

 and William Scranton
William Scranton
William Warren Scranton is a former U.S. Republican Party politician. Scranton served as the 38th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1963 to 1967. From 1976 to 1977, he served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations.-Early life:...

, and Nixon overtly placed an emphasis on "law and order" over civil liberties, and Nixon's Enemies List
Nixon's Enemies List
Nixon’s Enemies List is the informal name of what started as a list of President of the United States Richard Nixon’s major political opponents compiled by Charles Colson, written by George T. Bell , and sent in memorandum form to John Dean on September 9, 1971...

 was composed largely of liberals – in some ways the continuity of many of Nixon's policies with those of the Kennedy-Johnson years is more remarkable than the differences. Pointing at this continuity, New Left leader Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...

 (himself on Nixon's enemies list) has called Nixon, "in many respects the last liberal president."

Although liberals turned increasingly against the Vietnam War, to the point of running the very dovish George McGovern
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....

 for president in 1972, the war had, as noted above, been of largely liberal origin. Similarly, while many liberals condemned actions such as the Nixon administrations support for the 1973 Chilean coup, it was not entirely dissimilar to the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...

 in 1961 or the marine landing in the Dominican Republic in 1965
Operation Power Pack
The second United States occupation of the Dominican Republic began when the United States Marines Corps entered Santo Domingo on April 28, 1965. They were later joined by most of the United States Army's 82nd Airborne Division and its parent XVIIIth Airborne Corps...

.

The political dominance of the liberal consensus even into the Nixon years can best be seen in policies such as the successful establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency or his failed proposal to replace the welfare system with a guaranteed annual income by way of a negative income tax
Negative income tax
In economics, a negative income tax is a progressive income tax system where people earning below a certain amount receive supplemental pay from the government instead of paying taxes to the government. Such a system has been discussed by economists but never fully implemented...

. Affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...

 in its most quota-oriented form was a Nixon administration policy. Even the Nixon "War on Drugs
War on Drugs
The War on Drugs is a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention being undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, intended to both define and reduce the illegal drug trade...

" allocated two-thirds of its funds for treatment, a far higher ratio than was to be the case under any subsequent President, Republican or Democrat. Additionally, Nixon's normalization of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

 and his policy of détente with the Soviet Union were probably more popular with liberals than with his conservative base.

An opposing view, offered by Cass R. Sunstein, in The Second Bill of Rights (Basic Books, 2004, ISBN 0-465-08332-3) argues that Nixon, through his Supreme Court appointments, effectively ended a decades-long expansion of economic rights along the lines of those put forward in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...

, adopted in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly
United Nations General Assembly
For two articles dealing with membership in the General Assembly, see:* General Assembly members* General Assembly observersThe United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal organs of the United Nations and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation...

.

Labor unions

Labor unions were central components of liberalism, operating through the New Deal Coalition
New Deal coalition
The New Deal Coalition was the alignment of interest groups and voting blocs that supported the New Deal and voted for Democratic presidential candidates from 1932 until the late 1960s. It made the Democratic Party the majority party during that period, losing only to Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952...

. The unions gave strong support to the Vietnam War, thereby breaking with the blacks and with the intellectual and student wings of liberalism. From time to time dissident groups such as Progressive Alliance, the Citizen-Labor Energy Coalition, and the National Labor Committee broke from the dominant AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...

, which they saw as too conservative. In 1995 the liberals managed to take control of the AFL-CIO, under the leadership of John Sweeney
John Sweeney (labor leader)
John Joseph Sweeney was the president of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009.-Early years:Born in The Bronx, New York, Sweeney is the son of Joseph and Agnes , both Irish immigrants. The family moved to Yonkers in 1944, where Sweeney attended St. Barnabas Elementary School and graduated from Cardinal...

 of the Service Employees International Union
Service Employees International Union
Service Employees International Union is a labor union representing about 1.8 million workers in over 100 occupations in the United States , and Canada...

 (SEIU). Union membership in the private sector has fallen from 33% to 7%, with a resulting decline in political weight. In 2005 the SEIU, now led by Andy Stern
Andy Stern
Andrew L. "Andy" Stern , is the former president of the 2.2 million-member Service Employees International Union , the fastest-growing union in the Americas. SEIU is the second largest union in the United States and Canada after the National Education Association.Stern was elected in 1996 to...

 broke away from the AFL-CIO to form its own coalition, the Change to Win Federation
Change to Win Federation
The Change to Win Federation is a coalition of American labor unions originally formed in 2005 as an alternative to the AFL-CIO. The coalition is associated with strong advocacy of the organizing model...

, to support liberalism, including the Obama agenda, especially health care reform. Stern retired in 2010. Regardless of the loss of numbers, unions have a long tradition and deep experience in organizing, and continue at the state and national level to mobilize forces for a liberal agenda, especially regarding votes for Democrats, taxes, spending, union representation, and the threat to American jobs from foreign trade. Offsetting the decline in the private sector, is a growth of unionization in the public sector. The membership of unions in the public sector, such as teachers, police, and city workers, continues to rise, now covering 42% of local government workers. The financial crisis that hit American states during the recession of 2008-2011 focused increasing attention on pension systems for government employees, with conservatives trying to reduce the pensions.

Environmentalism

A new, unexpected political discourse emerged in the 1970s centered on the environment. The debates did not fall neatly into a left-right dimension, for everyone proclaimed their support for the environment. Environmentalism appealed to the well-educated middle class, but aroused fears among lumbermen, farmers, ranchers, blue collar workers, automobile companies and oil companies whose economic interests were threatened by new regulations. Conservatives therefore tended to oppose environmentalism while liberals endorsed new measures to protect the environment. Liberals supported the Wilderness Society
The Wilderness Society (United States)
The Wilderness Society is an American organization that is dedicated to protecting America's wilderness. It was formed in 1935 and currently has over 300,000 members and supporters.-Founding:The society was incorporated on January 21, 1935...

 and the Sierra Club
Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the conservationist and preservationist John Muir, who became its first president...

, and were sometimes successful in blocking efforts by lumber companies and oil drillers to expand operations. Environmental legislation limited the use of DDT
DDT
DDT is one of the most well-known synthetic insecticides. It is a chemical with a long, unique, and controversial history....

, reduced acid rain
Acid rain
Acid rain is a rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, meaning that it possesses elevated levels of hydrogen ions . It can have harmful effects on plants, aquatic animals, and infrastructure. Acid rain is caused by emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen...

, and protected numerous animal and plant species. Within the environmental movement, there was a small radical element that favored direct action rather than legislation. By the 21st century debates over taking major action to reverse global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

 by and dealing with carbon emissions were high on the agenda. The environmental movement in the United States has given little support to third parties, unlike Europe, where Green parties play a growing role in politics.

End of the liberal consensus

During the Nixon years (and through the 1970s), the liberal consensus began to come apart with the election of Ronald Reagan marking the election of the first non-Keynsian administration and the first application of supply-side economics
Supply-side economics
Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought that argues that economic growth can be most effectively created by lowering barriers for people to produce goods and services, such as lowering income tax and capital gains tax rates, and by allowing greater flexibility by reducing...

. The alliance with white Southern Democrats had been lost in the Civil Rights era. While the steady enfranchisement of African Americans expanded the electorate to include many new voters sympathetic to liberal views, it was not quite enough to make up for the loss of some Southern Democrats. A tide of conservatism rose in response to perceived failures of liberal policies. Organized labor, long a bulwark of the liberal consensus, was past the peak of its power in the US and many unions had remained in favor of the Vietnam War even as liberal politicians increasingly turned against it.

In 1980 the leading liberal was Senator Ted Kennedy
Ted Kennedy
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. Serving almost 47 years, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history...

; he challenged incumbent President Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...

 for the Democratic Party presidential nomination because Carter's failures had disenchanted liberals. Kennedy was decisively defeated, and in turn Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

.

Historian often use 1979-80 to date a philosophical realignment within the American electorate away from Democratic liberalism and toward Reagan Era
Reagan Era
The Reagan Era or Age of Reagan is a periodization of recent American history used by historians and political observers to emphasize that the conservative "Reagan Revolution" led by President Ronald Reagan in domestic and foreign policy had a permanent impact...

 conservatism. However, some liberals hold a minority view that there was no real shift and that Kennedy's defeat was merely by historical accident caused by his poor campaign, international crises and Carter's use of the incumbency.

Abrams (2006) argues that the eclipse of liberalism was caused by a grass-roots populist revolt, often with a Fundamentalist and anti-modern theme, abetted by corporations eager to weaken labor unions and the regulatory regime of the New Deal. The success of liberalism in the first place, he argues, came from efforts of a liberal elite that had entrenched itself in key social, political, and especially judicial positions. These elites, Abrams contends, imposed their brand of liberalism from within some of the least democratic and most insulated institutions, especially the universities, foundations, independent regulatory agencies, and the Supreme Court. With only a weak popular base, liberalism was vulnerable to a populist counterrevolution by the nation's democratic or majoritarian forces.

"Liberal" as a derogatory epithet

A number of politicians, activists, and media outlets in the years from 1950 to 2011 have employed "liberal" as an epithet, giving it an ominous or sinister connotation, while invoking phrases like "free enterprise", "individual rights", "patriotic", and "the American way" to describe opponents of liberalism. Historian John Lukacs
John Lukacs
John Adalbert Lukacs is a Hungarian-born American historian who has written more than thirty books, including Five Days in London, May 1940 and A New Republic...

 noted in 2004 that then-President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

, confident that many Americans regarded "liberal" as a pejorative term, used it to label his political opponents during campaign speeches, while his opponents subsequently avoided identifying themselves as liberal.

Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

's ridicule of liberalism is credited with transforming "liberal" into a derogatory epithet that any politician seeking national office would avoid. His speechwriters repeatedly contrasted "liberals" and "real Americans". For example, Reagan's then-Secretary of the Interior, James G. Watt
James G. Watt
James Gaius Watt served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior for President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1983.-Early life and career:...

 said "I never use the words Republicans and Democrats. It's liberals and Americans." Reagan warned the United States of modern secularists who condoned abortion, excused teenage sexuality, opposed school prayer, and attenuated traditional American values. His conviction that there existed a single proper personal behavior, religious worldview, economic system, and proper attitude toward nations and peoples not supporting U.S. interests worldwide, is credited by comparative literature scholar Betty Jean Craige with polarizing America. Reagan persuaded a large portion of the public to dismiss any sincere analyses of his administration's policies as politically motivated criticisms put forth by what he labeled a "liberal" media.

George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...

 employed the word "liberal" as a derogatory epithet during his 1988 presidential campaign. Bush described himself as a patriot, and described his liberal opponents as unpatriotic. He referred to liberalism as "the L-word" and sought to demonize opposing presidential candidate Michael Dukakis
Michael Dukakis
Michael Stanley Dukakis served as the 65th and 67th Governor of Massachusetts from 1975–1979 and from 1983–1991, and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988. He was born to Greek immigrants in Brookline, Massachusetts, also the birthplace of John F. Kennedy, and was the longest serving...

 by labeling Dukakis "the liberal governor" and by pigeonholing him as part of what Bush called "the L-crowd." Bush recognized that motivating voters to fear Dukakis as a risky, non-mainstream candidate generated political support for his own campaign. Bush's campaign also used issues of prayer to arouse suspicions that Dukakis was less devout in his religious convictions. Bush's running mate, vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle
Dan Quayle
James Danforth "Dan" Quayle served as the 44th Vice President of the United States, serving with President George H. W. Bush . He served as a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator from the state of Indiana....

 said to Christians at the 1988 Republican National Convention
1988 Republican National Convention
The 1988 National Convention of the Republican Party of the United States was held in the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana from August 15 to August 18, 1988. It was the second time that a major party held its conclave in one of the five states known as the Deep South, coming on the...

 "It's always good to be with people who are real Americans." Bill Clinton avoided association with "liberal" as a political label during his 1992 presidential campaign against George H. W. Bush by moving closer to the political center
Centrism
In politics, centrism is the ideal or the practice of promoting policies that lie different from the standard political left and political right. Most commonly, this is visualized as part of the one-dimensional political spectrum of left-right politics, with centrism landing in the middle between...

.

Law professor and public policy researcher Patrick M. Garry notes that Republicans who insulted Democrats for their liberal values in 1988 ignored their own history with liberalism, citing the 1980 campaign of independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson
John B. Anderson
John Bayard Anderson is a former United States Congressman and Presidential candidate from Illinois. He was a U.S. Representative from the 16th Congressional District of Illinois for ten terms from 1961 through 1981 and an Independent candidate in the 1980 presidential election. He was previously...

 as a visible example of liberalism originating from within the Republican party. Some Republicans have voiced disappointment over conservative attacks on liberalism. One example is former governor of Minnesota and founder of the Liberal Republican Club Elmer L. Andersen
Elmer L. Andersen
Elmer Lee Andersen was an American businessman, philanthropist, and the 30th Governor of Minnesota, serving a single term from January 2, 1961, to March 25, 1963, as a Republican.- Early life and education :...

, who commented that it's "unfortunate today that 'liberal' is used as a derogatory term." After the 1980s, fewer activists and politicians were willing to characterize themselves as liberals. Historian Kevin Boyle explains "There was a time when liberalism was, in Arthur Schlesinger's words 'a fighting faith' ... Over the last three decades, though, liberalism has become an object of ridicule, condemned for its misplaced idealism, vilified for its tendency to equivocate and compromise, and mocked for its embrace of political correctness. Now even the most ardent reformers run from the label, fearing the damage it will inflict..." Republican political consultant Arthur J. Finkelstein
Arthur J. Finkelstein
Arthur J. Finkelstein is a New York-based Republican Party consultant who has worked for conservative candidates in the United States, Canada, Israel and Eastern Europe over the past four decades. With his brother he runs a political consulting and lobbying firm based in Irvington, New York...

 was recognized by Democratic political consultants for having employed a formula of branding someone as a liberal and engaging in name-calling by using the word "liberal" in negative television commercials as frequently as possible, such as in a 1996 ad against U.S. Representative Jack Reed: "That's liberal. That's Jack Reed. That's wrong. Call liberal Jack Reed and tell him his record on welfare is just too liberal for you."

Democratic candidates and political liberals have hidden from the word "liberal," in some cases identifying instead with terms such as "progressive" or "moderate." George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....

 accused their opponents of liberal elitism, softness, and pro-terrorism in attempts to frighten voters. Conservative political commentators such as Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III is an American radio talk show host, conservative political commentator, and an opinion leader in American conservatism. He hosts The Rush Limbaugh Show which is aired throughout the U.S. on Premiere Radio Networks and is the highest-rated talk-radio program in the United...

 consistently used "liberal" as a pejorative label. When liberals shifted to the word "progressive" to describe their beliefs, conservative radio host Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck
Glenn Edward Lee Beck is an American conservative radio host, vlogger, author, entrepreneur, political commentator and former television host. He hosts the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks...

 used "progressive" as an abusive label. Ann Coulter is recognized for espousing radical conservative views and hatred of liberals; she outraged students attending her talk at The College of New Jersey
The College of New Jersey
The College of New Jersey, abbreviated TCNJ, is a public, coeducational university located in Ewing Township, New Jersey, a suburb of Trenton....

 by calling white liberals "a bunch of pussies" and condemning them as responsible for prolonging slavery in America. Historian Godfrey Hodgson notes "The word liberal itself has fallen into disrepute. Nothing is too bad for conservative bloggers and columnists—let alone radio hosts—to say about liberals. Democrats themselves run a mile from the 'L word' for fear of being seen as dangerously outside the mainstream. Conservative politicians and publicists, by dint of associating liberals with all manner of absurdity so that many sensible people hesitated to risk being tagged with the label of liberalism, succeeded in persuading the country that it was more conservative than it actually was."

Historian Eric Alterman
Eric Alterman
Eric Alterman is an American English teacher, historian, journalist, author, media critic, blogger, and educator. His political weblog named Altercation was hosted by MSNBC.com from 2002 until 2006, moved to Media Matters for America until December 2008, and is now hosted by The...

 notes that barely 20% of Americans are willing to accept "liberal" as a political label, but that supermajorities of Americans actually favor "liberal" positions time and again. Alterman points out that resistance to the label "liberal" is not surprising due to billions of dollars worth of investment poured into the denigration of the term. A 2004 poll conducted by the National Election Study found only 35% of respondents questioned identifying as liberal compared to 55% identifying as conservative; a 2004 Pew poll found 19% of respondents identifying as liberal, and 39% identifying as conservative, with the balance identifying as moderate. A 2006 poll by Democracy Corp found that 19% identified as liberal, and 36% conservative. In 2005, self-identifying moderates polled by Louis Harris & Associates
Harris Interactive
Harris Interactive , headquartered in New York, New York, is a custom market research firm, known for the Harris Poll. Harris works in a wide range of industries...

 were found to share essentially the same political beliefs as self-identifying liberals, but rejected the world "liberal" because of the vilification heaped on the word itself by conservatives. Alterman acknowledges political scientist Drew Westen
Drew Westen
Andrew "Drew" Westen is professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University, an M.A. in Social and Political Thought from the University of Sussex , and a Ph.D...

's observation that for most Americans, the word "liberal" now carries meanings such as "elite", "tax and spend", and "out of touch".

Free speech

American liberals describe themselves as open to change and receptive to new ideas. For example, liberals typically accept scientific ideas that some conservatives reject, such as evolution and global warming.

Liberals oppose the Supreme Court's "Citizens United"
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, , was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that the First Amendment prohibits government from censoring political broadcasts in candidate elections when those broadcasts are funded by corporations or unions...

 ruling in 2010 that corporations have a right to free speech, with President Obama calling it "a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans."

Opposition to socialism

In general, liberalism opposes socialism when socialism is understood to mean an alternate to capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

 based on state ownership of the means of production. American liberals doubt that bases for political opposition and freedom can survive when all power is vested in the state, as it was under state-socialist regimes
Communist state
A communist state is a state with a form of government characterized by single-party rule or dominant-party rule of a communist party and a professed allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist-Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state...

. In line with the general pragmatic, empirical basis of liberalism, American liberal philosophy embraces the idea that if substantial abundance and equality of opportunity can be achieved through a system of mixed ownership
Mixed economy
Mixed economy is an economic system in which both the state and private sector direct the economy, reflecting characteristics of both market economies and planned economies. Most mixed economies can be described as market economies with strong regulatory oversight, in addition to having a variety...

, then there is no need for a rigid and oppressive bureaucracy. Some liberal public intellectuals have, since the 1950s, moved further toward the general position that free markets, when appropriately regulated, can provide better solutions than top-down economic planning. Paul Krugman argued that, in hitherto-state-dominated functions such as nation-scale energy distribution and telecommunications, marketizations can improve efficiency dramatically. He also defended a monetary policy -- inflation targeting
Inflation targeting
Inflation targeting is an economic policy in which a central bank estimates and makes public a projected, or "target", inflation rate and then attempts to steer actual inflation towards the target through the use of interest rate changes and other monetary tools.Because interest rates and the...

 -- saying that it "most nearly approaches the usual goal of modern stabilization policy, which is to provide adequate demand in a clean, unobtrusive way that does not distort the allocation of resources." (These distortions are of a kind that war-time and post-war Keynesian economists had accepted as an inevitable byproduct of fiscal policies that selectively reduced certain consumer taxes and directed spending toward government-managed stimulus projects—even where these economists theorized at a contentious distance from some of Keynes's own, more hands-off, positions, which tended to emphasize stimulating of business investment.) Thomas Friedman is a liberal journalist who, like Paul Krugman, generally defends free trade as more likely to improve the lot of both rich and poor countries.

Role of state

There is a fundamental split among liberals as to the role of the state. Historian H. W. Brands notes "the growth of the state is, by perhaps the most common definition, the essence of modern American liberalism." But according to Paul Starr, "Liberal constitutions impose constraints on the power of any single public official or branch of government as well as the state as a whole."

Morality

According to cognitive linguist George Lakoff
George Lakoff
George P. Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist and professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972...

, liberal philosophy is based on five basic categories of morality. The first, the promotion of fairness, is generally described as an emphasis on empathy as a desirable trait. With this social contract based on the Golden Rule
Ethic of reciprocity
The Golden Rule or ethic of reciprocity is a maxim, ethical code, or moralitythat essentially states either of the following:* : One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself....

 comes the rationale for many liberal positions. The second category is assistance to those who cannot assist themselves. A nurturing spirit is one that is considered good in liberal philosophy. This leads to the third category, the desire to protect those who cannot defend themselves. The fourth category is the importance of fulfilling one's life; allowing a person to experience all that they can. The fifth and final category is the importance of caring for oneself, since only thus can one act to help others.

Modern liberal thinkers and leaders in the United States

Politicians
  • William Jennings Bryan
    William Jennings Bryan
    William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...

     (1860–1925), 1896, 1900 and 1908 Democratic presidential nominee
  • President Theodore Roosevelt
    Theodore Roosevelt
    Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

     (1858–1919), became president upon assassination of William McKinley in 1904, declined to run in 1908, ran again but was defeated in 1912
  • President Woodrow Wilson
    Woodrow Wilson
    Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...

     (1856–1924), elected as Democrat 1912 & 1916
  • Senator Robert LaFollette
    Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
    Robert Marion "Fighting Bob" La Follette, Sr. , was an American Republican politician. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was the Governor of Wisconsin, and was also a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin...

    , Wisconsin (1855–1925)
  • President Franklin D. Roosevelt
    Franklin D. Roosevelt
    Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

     (1882–1945) elected as Democrat 1932-36-40-44
  • Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, New York City, Republican (1882–1947)
  • President Harry S. Truman
    Harry S. Truman
    Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

     (1884–1972), elected as Democrat 1948
  • Vice President Henry A. Wallace
    Henry A. Wallace
    Henry Agard Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States , the Secretary of Agriculture , and the Secretary of Commerce . In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.-Early life:Henry A...

     (1888–1965), Progressive Party
    Progressive Party (United States, 1948)
    The United States Progressive Party of 1948 was a left-wing political party that ran former Vice President Henry A. Wallace of Iowa for president and U.S. Senator Glen H. Taylor of Idaho for vice president in 1948.-Foundation:...

     presidential nominee in 1948
  • Harry Hopkins
    Harry Hopkins
    Harry Lloyd Hopkins was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisers. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration , which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country...

     (1890–1946), FDR adviser
  • Adlai E. Stevenson (1900–1965), 1952 and 1956 Democratic presidential nominee
  • Mayor Richard J. Daley
    Richard J. Daley
    Richard Joseph Daley served for 21 years as the mayor and undisputed Democratic boss of Chicago and is considered by historians to be the "last of the big city bosses." He played a major role in the history of the Democratic Party, especially with his support of John F...

    , Chicago (1902–1976)
  • Senator Ralph W. Yarborough, Texas (1903–1996)
  • Senator Jacob K. Javits
    Jacob K. Javits
    Jacob Koppel "Jack" Javits was a politician who served as United States Senator from New York from 1957 to 1981. A liberal Republican, he was originally allied with Governor Nelson Rockefeller, fellow U.S...

    , New York (1904–1986), Republican
  • President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
  • Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
    Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
    Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was an American politician and pastor who represented Harlem, New York City, in the United States House of Representatives . He was the first person of African-American descent elected to Congress from New York and became a powerful national politician...

    , New York (1908–1972)
  • Vice President Hubert Humphrey
    Hubert Humphrey
    Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...

     (1911–1978), 1968 Democratic presidential nominee
  • Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill
    Tip O'Neill
    Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill, Jr. was an American politician. O'Neill was an outspoken liberal Democrat and influential member of the U.S. Congress, serving in the House of Representatives for 34 years and representing two congressional districts in Massachusetts...

    , Massachusetts (1912–1994)
  • President John F. Kennedy
    John F. Kennedy
    John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

     (1917–1963), elected as Democrat 1960
  • Representative Bella Abzug
    Bella Abzug
    Bella Savitsky Abzug was an American lawyer, Congresswoman, social activist and a leader of the Women's Movement. In 1971, Abzug joined other leading feminists such as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan to found the National Women's Political Caucus...

    , New York (1920–1998)
  • Mayor John Lindsay
    John Lindsay
    John Vliet Lindsay was an American politician, lawyer and broadcaster who was a U.S. Congressman, Mayor of New York City, candidate for U.S...

    , New York City (1921–2000)
  • Senator George McGovern
    George McGovern
    George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....

    , South Dakota (b. 1922), 1972 Democratic presidential nominee
  • President Jimmy Carter
    Jimmy Carter
    James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...

     (b. 1924) elected as Democrat 1976
  • Senator Robert Kennedy, New York (1925–1968)
  • Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
    Daniel Patrick Moynihan
    Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times . He declined to run for re-election in 2000...

    , New York (1927–2003)
  • Vice President Walter Mondale
    Walter Mondale
    Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale is an American Democratic Party politician, who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States , under President Jimmy Carter, and as a United States Senator for Minnesota...

     (b. 1928), 1984 Democratic presidential nominee
  • Representative John Conyers
    John Conyers
    John Conyers, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1965 . He is a member of the Democratic Party...

    , Michigan (b. 1929)
  • Senator Ted Kennedy
    Ted Kennedy
    Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. Serving almost 47 years, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history...

    , Massachusetts (1932–2009)
  • Governor Mario Cuomo
    Mario Cuomo
    Mario Matthew Cuomo served as the 52nd Governor of New York from 1983 to 1994, and is the father of Andrew Cuomo, the current governor of New York.-Early life:...

    , New York (b. 1932)
  • Representative Barbara Jordan
    Barbara Jordan
    Barbara Charline Jordan was an American politician who was both a product and a leader, of the Civil Rights movement. She was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first southern black female elected to the United States House of Representatives...

    , Texas (1936–1996)
  • Representative John Lewis, Georgia (b. 1940)
  • Speaker Nancy Pelosi
    Nancy Pelosi
    Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi is the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives and served as the 60th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011...

    , California (b. 1940)
  • Representative Barney Frank
    Barney Frank
    Barney Frank is the U.S. Representative for . A member of the Democratic Party, he is the former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and is considered the most prominent gay politician in the United States.Born and raised in New Jersey, Frank graduated from Harvard College and...

    , Massachusetts (b. 1940)
  • Vice President Joe Biden
    Joe Biden
    Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama...

     (b. 1942), elected as Democrat 2008
  • Senator Paul Wellstone
    Paul Wellstone
    Paul David Wellstone was a two-term U.S. Senator from the state of Minnesota and member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which is affiliated with the national Democratic Party. Before being elected to the Senate in 1990, he was a professor of political science at Carleton College...

    , Minnesota (1944–2002)
  • President Bill Clinton
    Bill Clinton
    William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

     (b. 1946) elected as Democrat 1992 and 1996; he describes himself as a moderate
  • Representative Dennis Kucinich
    Dennis Kucinich
    Dennis John Kucinich is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1997. He was furthermore a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections....

    , Ohio (b. 1946)
  • Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
    Hillary Rodham Clinton
    Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the...

     (b. 1947)
  • Governor Howard Dean
    Howard Dean
    Howard Brush Dean III is an American politician and physician from Vermont. He served six terms as the 79th Governor of Vermont and ran unsuccessfully for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. He was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009. Although his U.S...

    , Vermont (b. 1948)
  • Vice President Al Gore
    Al Gore
    Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

     (b. 1948), 2000 Democratic presidential nominee
  • Governor Lincoln Chafee
    Lincoln Chafee
    Lincoln Davenport Chafee is an American politician who has been the 74th Governor of Rhode Island since January 2011. Prior to his election as governor, Chafee served in the United States Senate as a Republican from 1999 until losing his Senate re-election bid in 2006 to Democrat Sheldon...

    , Rhode Island (b. 1953)
  • Senator Russ Feingold
    Russ Feingold
    Russell Dana "Russ" Feingold is an American politician from the U.S. state of Wisconsin. He served as a Democratic party member of the U.S. Senate from 1993 to 2011. From 1983 to 1993, Feingold was a Wisconsin State Senator representing the 27th District.He is a recipient of the John F...

    , Wisconsin (b. 1953)
  • President Barack Obama
    Barack Obama
    Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

     (b. 1961) elected as Democrat 2008


Intellectuals
  • Lester Frank Ward
    Lester Frank Ward
    Lester F. Ward was an American botanist, paleontologist, and sociologist. He served as the first president of the American Sociological Association.-Biography:...

     (1841–1913), sociologist
  • Thorstein Veblen
    Thorstein Veblen
    Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen was an American economist and sociologist, and a leader of the so-called institutional economics movement...

     (1857–1929), economist
  • John Dewey
    John Dewey
    John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...

     (1859–1952), philosopher
  • Herbert Croly
    Herbert Croly
    Herbert David Croly was an intellectual leader of the Progressive Movement as an editor, and political philosopher and a co-founder of the magazine The New Republic in early twentieth-century America...

     (1869–1930), political scientist
  • Charles A. Beard
    Charles A. Beard
    Charles Austin Beard was, with Frederick Jackson Turner, one of the most influential American historians of the first half of the 20th century. He published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science...

     (1874–1948), historian
  • Alvin Hansen
    Alvin Hansen
    Alvin Harvey Hansen , often referred to as "the American Keynes," was a professor of economics at Harvard, a widely read author on current economic issues, and an influential advisor to the government who helped create the Council of Economic Advisors and the Social security system...

     (1887–1975), economist
  • Reinhold Niebuhr
    Reinhold Niebuhr
    Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world...

    , (1892–1971), theologian
  • Lionel Trilling
    Lionel Trilling
    Lionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S...

     (1905–1975), literary critic
  • John Kenneth Galbraith
    John Kenneth Galbraith
    John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith , OC was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism...

     (1908–2006), economist
  • C. Vann Woodward
    C. Vann Woodward
    Comer Vann Woodward was a preeminent American historian focusing primarily on the American South and race relations. He was considered, along with Richard Hofstadter and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to be one of the most influential historians of the postwar era, 1940s-1970s, both by scholars and by...

     (1908–1999), historian
  • Richard Hofstadter
    Richard Hofstadter
    Richard Hofstadter was an American public intellectual of the 1950s, a historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University...

     (1916–1970), historian
  • Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1917–2007), historian
  • John Rawls
    John Rawls
    John Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University....

     (1921–2002), philosopher
  • William Appleman Williams
    William Appleman Williams
    William Appleman Williams was one of the 20th century's most prominent revisionist historians of American diplomacy, and has been called "the favorite historian of the Middle American New Left." He achieved the height of his influence while on the faculty of the Department of History at the...

     (1921–1990), historian
  • Howard Zinn
    Howard Zinn
    Howard Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...

     (1922–2010), historian
  • Richard Rorty
    Richard Rorty
    Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...

     (1931–2007), philosopher
  • Garry Wills
    Garry Wills
    Garry Wills is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and prolific author, journalist, and historian, specializing in American politics, American political history and ideology and the Roman Catholic Church. Classically trained at a Jesuit high school and two universities, he is proficient in Greek and Latin...

     (b. 1934), historian
  • Robert Reich
    Robert Reich
    Robert Bernard Reich is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997....

     (b. 1946), economist
  • Amy Gutmann
    Amy Gutmann
    Amy Gutmann is the eighth President of the University of Pennsylvania and the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Communications, and Philosophy...

     (b. 1949), political scientist
  • Henry Louis Gates (b. 1950), Black studies
  • Cornel West
    Cornel West
    Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America....

     (b. 1953), philosopher, theologian
  • Paul Krugman
    Paul Krugman
    Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...

     (b. 1953), economist
  • Melissa Harris-Perry (b. 1972), African American scholar

Jurists and the law
  • Justice Louis Brandeis
    Louis Brandeis
    Louis Dembitz Brandeis ; November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941) was an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Jewish immigrant parents who raised him in a secular mode...

     (1856–1941)
  • Justice Felix Frankfurter
    Felix Frankfurter
    Felix Frankfurter was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.-Early life:Frankfurter was born into a Jewish family on November 15, 1882, in Vienna, Austria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Europe. He was the third of six children of Leopold and Emma Frankfurter...

     (1882–1965)
  • Chief Justice Earl Warren
    Earl Warren
    Earl Warren was the 14th Chief Justice of the United States.He is known for the sweeping decisions of the Warren Court, which ended school segregation and transformed many areas of American law, especially regarding the rights of the accused, ending public-school-sponsored prayer, and requiring...

     (1891–1974)
  • Justice William O. Douglas
    William O. Douglas
    William Orville Douglas was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. With a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, he is the longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court...

     (1898–1980)
  • Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.
    William J. Brennan, Jr.
    William Joseph Brennan, Jr. was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1956 to 1990...

     (1906–1997)
  • Justice Thurgood Marshall
    Thurgood Marshall
    Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...

     (1908–1993)
  • Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. (1928–1998)
  • Ronald Dworkin
    Ronald Dworkin
    Ronald Myles Dworkin, QC, FBA is an American philosopher and scholar of constitutional law. He is Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University and Emeritus Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London, and has taught previously at Yale Law School and the...

     (b. 1931), jurisprudence
  • John Hart Ely
    John Hart Ely
    John Hart Ely is one of the most widely-cited legal scholars in United States history, ranking just after Richard Posner, Ronald Dworkin, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., according to a 2000 study in the University of Chicago's Journal of Legal Studies.-Biography:Born in New York City, John Hart...

     (1938–2003), jurisprudence
  • Lawrence Tribe (b. 1941), jurisprudence
  • Harold Koh (b. 1954), jurisprudence
  • Pamela Karlan (b.1959), jurisprudence
  • Jeffrey Toobin
    Jeffrey Toobin
    Jeffrey Ross Toobin is an American lawyer, author, and legal analyst for CNN and The New Yorker.-Early life and education:...

     (b. 1960), lawyer, legal analyst, author


Writers, activists and commentators
  • Samuel Gompers
    Samuel Gompers
    Samuel Gompers was an English-born American cigar maker who became a labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor , and served as that organization's president from 1886 to 1894 and from 1895 until his death in 1924...

     (1850–1924), labor leader
  • W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), Black leader
  • John L. Lewis
    John L. Lewis
    John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960...

     (1880–1969), labor leader
  • Ezra Klein
    Ezra Klein
    Ezra Klein is a liberal American blogger and columnist for The Washington Post, columnist for Bloomberg, a columnist for Newsweek, and a contributor to MSNBC...

     (b. 1984), columnist, blogger
  • Eleanor Roosevelt
    Eleanor Roosevelt
    Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...

     (1884–1962), writer; Democratic leader
  • Rachel Carson
    Rachel Carson
    Rachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement....

     (1907–1964), environmentalist
  • Walter Reuther
    Walter Reuther
    Walter Philip Reuther was an American labor union leader, who made the United Automobile Workers a major force not only in the auto industry but also in the Democratic Party in the mid 20th century...

     (1907–1970), labor leader
  • Betty Friedan
    Betty Friedan
    Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist.A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century...

     (1921–2006), feminist
  • Gore Vidal
    Gore Vidal
    Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...

     (b. 1925), author, activist
  • Coretta Scott King
    Coretta Scott King
    Coretta Scott King was an American author, activist, and civil rights leader. The widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King helped lead the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.Mrs...

     (1927–2006), Black leader
  • Cesar Chávez
    César Chávez
    César Estrada Chávez was an American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers ....

     (1927–1993), Chicano leader
  • Harvey Milk
    Harvey Milk
    Harvey Bernard Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors...

     (1930–1978), gay rights
  • George Soros
    George Soros
    George Soros is a Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, philosopher, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. Soros supports progressive-liberal causes...

     (b. 1930), financier, philanthropist
  • Susan Sontag
    Susan Sontag
    Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...

     (1933–2004), writer
  • Ralph Nader
    Ralph Nader
    Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....

     (b. 1934), consumer advocate
  • Gloria Steinem
    Gloria Steinem
    Gloria Marie Steinem is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...

     (b. 1934), feminist
  • Jim Hightower
    Jim Hightower
    James Allen "Jim" Hightower is an American syndicated columnist, activist and author.-Life and career:Born in Denison, Texas, Hightower came from a working class background. He worked his way through college as assistant general manager of the Denton Chamber of Commerce and later landed a spot as...

     (b. 1943), columnist, author, activist
  • Faye Wattleton
    Faye Wattleton
    Faye Wattleton is the first African-American and youngest President ever elected to Planned Parenthood . Currently, she serves as the President of the Center for the Advancement of Women, and also serves on the board of trustees at Columbia University...

     (b. 1943), feminist
  • Patricia Ireland
    Patricia Ireland
    Patricia Ireland is a U.S. administrator and feminist. She served as president of the National Organization for Women, from 1991 to 2001 and published an autobiography, What Women Want, in 1996....

     (b. 1945), feminist
  • Arianna Huffington
    Arianna Huffington
    Arianna Huffington is a Greek American author and syndicated columnist. She is best known as co-founder of the news website The Huffington Post. A popular conservative commentator in the mid-1990s, she adopted more liberal political beliefs in the late 1990s...

     (b. 1950), political commentator
  • Lawrence O'Donnell (b. 1951), political commentator
  • Bill Maher
    Bill Maher
    William "Bill" Maher, Jr. is an American stand-up comedian, television host, political commentator, author and actor. Before his current role as the host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher hosted a similar late-night talk show called Politically Incorrect originally on Comedy Central and...

     (b. 1956), comedian, political commentator
  • Amy Goodman
    Amy Goodman
    Amy Goodman is an American progressive broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter and author. Goodman is the host of Democracy Now!, an independent global news program broadcast daily on radio, television and the internet.-Early life:Goodman was born in Bay Shore, New York...

     (b. 1957), journalist, columnist, author
  • Keith Olbermann
    Keith Olbermann
    Keith Theodore Olbermann is an American political commentator and writer. He has been the chief news officer of the Current TV network and the host of Current TV's weeknight political commentary program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, since June 20, 2011...

     (b. 1959), journalist, political commentator
  • Katrina vanden Heuvel
    Katrina vanden Heuvel
    Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor, publisher, and part-owner of the magazine The Nation. She has been the magazine's editor since 1995. She is a frequent guest on numerous television programs...

     (b. 1959), journalist, political commentator
  • Tavis Smiley
    Tavis Smiley
    Tavis Smiley is a talk show host, author, liberal political commentator, entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist. Smiley was born in Gulfport, Mississippi and grew up in Kokomo, Indiana. After attending Indiana University, he worked during the late 1980s as an aide to Tom Bradley, the mayor of...

     (b. 1964), political commentator
  • Cenk Uygur
    Cenk Uygur
    Cenk Kadir Uygur , is the main host and co-founder of the liberal Internet and talk radio show, The Young Turks . A naturalized U.S. citizen, Uygur was born in Turkey and raised from age eight in the United States. He worked as an attorney in Washington D.C. and New York before beginning his career...

     (b. 1970), radio host, political commentator
  • Rachel Maddow
    Rachel Maddow
    Rachel Anne Maddow is an American television host and political commentator. Maddow hosts a nightly television show, The Rachel Maddow Show, on MSNBC. Her syndicated talk radio program, The Rachel Maddow Show, aired on Air America Radio...

     (b. 1973), political commentator


Religious leaders
  • Anna Pauline Murray (1910–1985), reverend, lawyer, civil rights activist
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.
    Martin Luther King, Jr.
    Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...

     (1929–1968), pastor and civil rights activist
  • Arthur Waskow
    Arthur Waskow
    Arthur Ocean Waskow, born Arthur I. Waskow, is an American author, political activist, and rabbi associated with the Jewish Renewal movement.-Education and early career:...

     (b. 1933), rabbi, political activist, author
  • Jesse Jackson
    Jesse Jackson
    Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...

     (b. 1941), pastor and civil rights activist
  • David Saperstein
    David Saperstein (rabbi)
    David Saperstein is a rabbi, lawyer, and Jewish community leader. He has served as the director and chief legal counsel at the Union for Reform Judaism's Religious Action Center for more than 30 years. Saperstein succeeded Rabbi Richard G. Hirsch as leader of the Washington D.C.-based political...

     (b. 1947) rabbi, political activist
  • Jim Wallis
    Jim Wallis
    Jim Wallis is an American evangelical Christian writer and political activist. He is best known as the founder and editor of Sojourners magazine, and of the Washington, D.C.-based Christian community of the same name....

     (b. 1948), Evangelical pastor, founder and editor of Sojourners
  • Al Sharpton
    Al Sharpton
    Alfred Charles "Al" Sharpton, Jr. is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election...

     (b. 1954), pastor and civil rights activist
  • Welton Gaddy
    State of Belief
    State of Belief is a weekly radio program on four U.S. radio stations and the Internet, hosted by Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of Interfaith Alliance....

    , pastor, religious commentator, radio host
  • Michael Lerner
    Michael Lerner (rabbi)
    Michael Lerner is a political activist, the editor of Tikkun, a progressive Jewish interfaith magazine based in Berkeley, California, and the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue of San Francisco.-Family and Education:...

    , rabbi, political activist
  • Lennox Yearwood
    Lennox Yearwood
    Lennox Yearwood, Jr., is a minister, community activist, and one of the most influential people in Hip Hop political life.He currently serves as President of the Hip Hop Caucus in Washington, D.C. The Hip Hop Caucus is a national, nonprofit, nonpartisan, organization that engages young people in...

    , pastor, activist


Blogs
  • AlterNet
    AlterNet
    AlterNet, a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute, is a progressive/liberal activist news service. Launched in 1998, AlterNet now claims a readership of over 3 million visitors per month .AlterNet publishes original content as well as journalism from a wide variety of other sources...

  • Daily Kos
    Daily Kos
    Daily Kos is an American political blog that publishes news and opinions from a progressive point of view. It functions as a discussion forum and group blog for a variety of netroots activists, whose efforts are primarily directed toward influencing and strengthening the Democratic Party...

  • FireDogLake
    Firedoglake
    Firedoglake is a US collaborative blog which primarily specialises in covering news from a left-progressive/left-liberal stance...

  • The Huffington Post
    The Huffington Post
    The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...

  • Talking Points Memo
    Talking Points Memo
    Talking Points Memo is a web-based political journalism organization created and run by Josh Marshall, journalist and historian covering issues from a "politically left perspective,". It debuted on November 12, 2000...



Magazines and publications
  • The American Prospect
    The American Prospect
    The American Prospect is a monthly American political magazine dedicated to American liberalism. Based in Washington, DC, The American Prospect is a journal "of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics" which focuses on United States politics...

  • Mother Jones
    Mother Jones (magazine)
    Mother Jones is an American independent news organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Mother Jones has been nominated for 23 National Magazine Awards and has won six times, including for General Excellence in 2001,...

  • The Nation
    The Nation
    The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...

  • The New Republic
    The New Republic
    The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

  • Sojourners

See also

  • Economic interventionism
    Economic interventionism
    Economic interventionism is an action taken by a government in a market economy or market-oriented mixed economy, beyond the basic regulation of fraud and enforcement of contracts, in an effort to affect its own economy...

  • Progressive Christianity
    Progressive Christianity
    Progressive Christianity is the name given to a movement within contemporary Christianity characterized by willingness to question tradition, acceptance of human diversity with a strong emphasis on social justice or care for the poor and the oppressed and environmental stewardship of the Earth...

  • Progressivism in the United States
    Progressivism in the United States
    Progressivism in the United States is a broadly based reform movement that reached its height early in the 20th century and is generally considered to be middle class and reformist in nature. It arose as a response to the vast changes brought by modernization, such as the growth of large...


Further reading

  • Abrams, Richard M. America Transformed: Sixty Years of Revolutionary Change, 1941–2001 (2006)
  • Battista, Andrew. The Revival of Labor Liberalism (2008) 268 pp. ISBN 978-0-252-03232-5
  • Boyle, Kevin. The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism 1945-1968 (1995) on the UAW (auto workers)
  • Brands, H.W. The Strange Death of American Liberalism (2003); brief survey of all of American history.
  • Cronin, James, George Ross, and James Shoch, eds. What's Left of the Left: Democrats and Social Democrats in Challenging Times (Duke University Press; 2011); 413 pages; essays on how center-left political parties have fared in Europe and the U.S. since the 1970s.
  • Dionne, E.J. They Only Look Dead; Why Progressives will Dominate the Next Political Era (1996)
  • Hamby, Alonzo. Liberalism and Its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush (1992), by leading historian
  • Hart, Gary. Restoration of the Republic: The Jeffersonian Ideal in 21st century America (2002) by a leading Democrat
  • Hayward, Steven F. The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order: 1964-1980 (2009), a conservative interpretation
  • Hays, Samuel P. Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955-1985 (1987)
  • Jumonville, Neil. Henry Steele Commager: midcentury liberalism and the history of the present (1999); Professor Henry Steele Commager
    Henry Steele Commager
    Henry Steele Commager was an American historian who helped define Modern liberalism in the United States for two generations through his forty books and 700 essays and reviews...

    (1902–1998) was a prolific historian and commentator
  • Kazin, Michael. American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation (2011)
  • Kramnick, Isaac and Theodore Lowi. American Political Thought (2006), textbook and reader
  • McKee, Guian A. The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia (2008)
  • Matusow, Allen J. The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (1984), by leading historian.
  • Parker, Richard. John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics (2006); biography of a leading intellectual of 1940s-1960s
  • Rossinow, Doug. Visions of Progress: The Left-Liberal Tradition in America (2008)
  • Starr. Paul. Freedom's Power: The History and Promise of Liberalism (2007), by a leading liberal scholar
  • Stein, Herbert. Presidential Economics: The Making of Economic Policy From Roosevelt to Clinton (3rd ed. 1994)
  • Sugrue, Thomas J. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (2009)
  • Willard, Charles Arthur. Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy (1996); debunks liberalism, arguing that its exaggerated ideals of authenticity, unity, and community have deflected attention from the pervasive incompetence of "the rule of experts."
  • Wilentz, Sean. The Age of Reagan: A History 1974-2008 (2008), by a leading liberal.
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