Modern liberalism in the United States#Labor unions

File:Educational Attainment in the States won by Kamala Harris in 2024.png in the 2024 United States presidential election{{cite web |title=EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT |url=https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=S1501&g=0100000US%240400000&tid=ACSST1Y2021.S1501&moe=false&tp=false |publisher=U.S. Census Bureau |access-date=18 September 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220919003628/https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=S1501&g=0100000US%240400000&tid=ACSST1Y2021.S1501&moe=false&tp=false |archive-date=19 September 2022 |url-status=live}}]]

The modern liberal philosophy strongly endorses public spending on programs such as education, health care, and welfare. Important social issues during the 21st century include social justice, economic inequality (wealth and income),Krugman, Paul (2007). The Conscience of a Liberal. p. 244. voting rights for minorities,Krugman, Paul (2007). The Conscience of a Liberal. p. 13. affirmative action,Krugman, Paul (2007). The Conscience of a Liberal. p 181. reproductive and other women's rights,Krugman, Paul (2007). The Conscience of a Liberal. p. 211. support for LGBT rights,[http://news.gallup.com/poll/210887/americans-split-new-lgbt-protections-restroom-policies.aspx "Americans Split Over New LGBT Protections, Restroom Policies"]. Gallup. May 18. 2017. Retrieved March 24, 2019.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZY9HDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA206 |title=The Oxford Handbook of Social Psychology and Social Justice |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2018 |isbn=9780199938735 |editor=Hammack |editor-first=Phillip L. |editor-link=Phillip L. Hammack |page=206}} and immigration reform.{{cite book|author=Debra L. DeLaet|title=U.S. Immigration Policy in an Age of Rights|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XnXW8v-NebIC&pg=PA69|year=2000|publisher=Greenwood|page=69|isbn=9780275967338}}Helco, Hugo (2005). The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism. Milkis, Sidney M.; Meileur, Jerome M., eds. University of Massachusetts Press, p. 58. {{ISBN|978-1-55849-493-0}}. "In [the 1970s], the American government began telling Americans what they could and could not do with regard to abortions, capital punishment, and bilingual education. The 1970s also brought new and more sweeping national regulations to deal with environmental challenges, consumer protection, workplace safety, gender discrimination, the rights of those with disabilities, and political spending". Modern liberalism took shape during the 20th century, with roots in Theodore Roosevelt's Square Deal and New Nationalism, Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal, John F. Kennedy's New Frontier and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society. Modern liberals oppose conservatives on most but not all issues. Although historically related to social liberalism and progressivism, the current relationship between liberal and progressive viewpoints is debated.{{Cite web |date=2010-04-14 |title=The Progressive Intellectual Tradition in America |url=https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/progressive-movement/report/2010/04/14/7677/the-progressive-intellectual-tradition-in-america/ |first1=John |last1=Halpin |first2=Conor P. |last2=Williams |website=Center for American Progress |language=en |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151219203812/https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/progressive-movement/report/2010/04/14/7677/the-progressive-intellectual-tradition-in-america/ |archive-date= Dec 19, 2015 }}{{cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/02/the-trouble-with-progressive/48351/|title=The Trouble With "Progressive"|author=Matthew Yglesias|work=The Atlantic|date=February 6, 2008 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230813013235/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/02/the-trouble-with-progressive/48351/ |archive-date= Aug 13, 2023 }}{{Cite magazine |last=Rauchway |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Rauchway |date=2006-09-24 |title=What's The Difference Between Progressives And Liberals? |url=http://www.tnr.com/blog/open-university/whats-the-difference-between-progressives-and-liberals |magazine=The New Republic |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130124193719/http://www.tnr.com/blog/open-university/whats-the-difference-between-progressives-and-liberals |archive-date= Jan 24, 2013 }}{{Cite web |last=Lind |first=Michael |date=Nov 21, 2008 |title=Is it OK to be liberal again, instead of progressive? |url=http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2008/11/21/liberals |url-status=deviated |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110806115601/http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2008/11/21/liberals |archive-date=Aug 6, 2011 |website=Salon}}{{cite magazine|url=http://www.tnr.com/article/naming-names|title=Naming Names |magazine=The New Republic|date=September 10, 2007 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121216012751/http://www.tnr.com/article/naming-names |archive-date= Dec 16, 2012 }}{{Cite magazine |last=Nagel |first=Thomas |date=May 25, 2006 |title=Progressive but Not Liberal |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/may/25/progressive-but-not-liberal/ |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151024121006/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/may/25/progressive-but-not-liberal/ |archive-date=Oct 24, 2015 |website=The New York Review of Books}} Modern liberalism is typically associated with the Democratic Party while modern conservatism is typically associated with the Republican Party.Pew Research Center, "[http://people-press.org/2011/09/12/more-now-see-gop-as-very-conservative/ More Now See GOP as Very Conservative]", September 12, 2011.

In 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt defined a liberal party in the following terms:

{{blockquote|The liberal party believes that, as new conditions and problems arise beyond the power of men and women to meet as individuals, it becomes the duty of Government itself to find new remedies with which to meet them. The liberal party insists that the Government has the definite duty to use all its power and resources to meet new social problems with new social controls—to ensure to the average person the right to his own economic and political life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.{{cite book|last=Franklin D. Roosevelt|title=Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1938, Volume 7|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MyfeAwAAQBAJ&pg=PR29|year=1941|page=xxix|publisher=Best Books on |isbn=9781623769673}}}}

In 1960, John F. Kennedy defined a liberal as follows:

{{blockquote|What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label, "Liberal"? If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But, if by a "Liberal," they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties—someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say that I'm a "Liberal."Authur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days, John F. Kennedy in the White House, p. 99, Mariner Books, 2002, {{ISBN|978-0-618-21927-8}}.Eric Alterman, Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America (2008) p. 32}}

Keynesian economic theory has played an important role in the economic philosophy of modern liberals.Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945–1968 (1998) p. 152 Modern liberals generally believe that national prosperity requires government management of the macroeconomy to keep unemployment low, inflation in check and growth high.{{citation needed|date=March 2019}} They also value institutions that defend against economic inequality. In The Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman writes: "I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I'm proud of it".{{cite book|last=Paul Krugman|title=The Conscience of a Liberal|url=https://archive.org/details/conscienceoflib00krug|url-access=registration|year=2009|publisher=W. W. Norton|page=[https://archive.org/details/conscienceoflib00krug/page/267 267]|isbn=9780393333138}} Modern liberals often point to the widespread prosperity enjoyed under a mixed economy in the years since World War II.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ml1Wn6S54n4C&dq=Key+Ideas+in+Politics&pg=PA12|title=Key Ideas in Politics|first=Moyra|last=Grant|date=July 14, 2003|publisher=Nelson Thornes|isbn=978-0-7487-7096-0 |via=Google Books}}Andrew Heywood, Political Ideologies: An Introduction (Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1998), 93. They believe liberty exists when access to necessities like health care and economic opportunity are available to allLarry E. Sullivan. The SAGE glossary of the social and behavioral sciences (2009) p 291, "This liberalism favors a generous welfare state and a greater measure of social and economic equality. Liberty thus exists when all citizens have access to basic necessities such as education, health care, and economic opportunities." and they champion the protection of the environment.John McGowan, American Liberalism: An Interpretation for Our Time (2007)Starr P. (March 1, 2007). "War and Liberalism." The New Republic."{{cite web|url=https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=20070305&s=starr030507|title=Starr, P. (1 March 2007). "War and Liberalism". The New Republic.|access-date=August 2, 2007}} "Liberalism wagers that a state ... can be strong but constrained – strong because constrained. ... Rights to education and other requirements for human development and security aim to advance the opportunity and personal dignity of minorities and to promote a creative and productive society. To guarantee those rights, liberals have supported a wider social and economic role for the state, counterbalanced by more robust guarantees of civil liberties and a wider social system of checks and balances anchored in an independent press and pluralistic society."

{{main|Liberalism|Liberalism worldwide}}

Colloquially, liberalism is used differently, in its primary use in different countries. In the United States the general term liberalism almost always refers to modern liberalism. There are some parties in Europe which nominally appeal to social liberalism, with the Beveridge Group faction within the Liberal Democrats, the Danish Social Liberal Party, the Democratic Movement, and the Italian Republican Party. One of the greatest contrasts is between the usage in the United States and usage in Europe and Latin America. According to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (writing in 1956), "[l]iberalism in the American usage has little in common with the word as used in the politics of any European country, save possibly Britain."[http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/schleslib.html "Liberalism in America: A Note for Europeans"] by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (1956) from: The Politics of Hope (Boston: Riverside Press, 1962). In Europe, liberalism usually means what is sometimes called classical liberalism, a commitment to limited government, laissez-faire economics. This classical liberalism sometimes more closely corresponds to the American definition of libertarianism, although some distinguish between classical liberalism and libertarianism.Tomasi, John Free Market Fairness, PUP, 2012

File:Self-identified liberals 2018 Gallup.svg poll:{{Cite web|last=Jones|first=Jeffrey M.|date=2019-02-22|title=Conservatives Greatly Outnumber Liberals in 19 U.S. States|url=https://news.gallup.com/poll/247016/conservatives-greatly-outnumber-liberals-states.aspx|access-date=2021-12-27|website=Gallup|language=en}}{{legend|#0f0fd6;|32% and above}}{{legend|#3333ff;|28–31%}}{{legend|#7373ff;|24–27%}}{{legend|#9f9fff;|20–23%}}{{legend|#bbbbff;|16–19%}}{{legend|#dcdcff;|15% and under}}]]

A 2005 Pew Research Center study found that liberals were the most educated ideological demographic and were tied with the conservative sub-group of 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.{{cite web|url=http://www.people-press.org/2005/05/10/beyond-red-vs-blue/|title=Pew Research Center. (10 May 2005). Beyond Red vs. Blue.|date=May 10, 2005|access-date=October 4, 2012}} 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 to 1984.{{cite book|last=Maranto, Redding, Hess|title=The Politically Correct University: Problems, Scope, and Reforms|year=2009|publisher=The AEI Press|isbn=978-0-8447-4317-2|pages=25–27|url=http://www.aei.org/press/education/higher-education/emthe-politically-correct-universityem/|access-date=October 5, 2012|archive-date=February 25, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140225032031/http://www.aei.org/press/education/higher-education/emthe-politically-correct-universityem/|url-status=dead}} The social sciences and humanities were most liberal whereas business and engineering departments were the least liberal; even in the business departments, however, liberals outnumbered conservatives by two to one.{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8427-2005Mar28.html|title=Kurtz, H. (29 March 2005). College Faculties A Most Liberal Lot, Study Finds. The Washington Post.|access-date=July 2, 2007 | date=March 29, 2005}} This feeds the common question of whether liberals are on average more educated than conservatives, their political counterparts. Two Zogby surveys from 2008 and 2010 affirm that self-identified liberals tend to go to college more than self-identified conservatives. Polls have found that young Americans are considerably more liberal than the general population.{{cite web|url=http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/conservatives-single-largest-ideological-group.aspx|title="Conservatives" Are Single-Largest Ideological Group|author=Gallup, Inc.|work=Gallup.com|date=June 15, 2009}} As of 2009, 30% of the 18–29 cohort was liberal. In 2011, this had changed to 28%, with moderates picking up the two percent.{{cite web|url=http://www.gallup.com/poll/152021/conservatives-remain-largest-ideological-group.aspx|title=Conservatives Remain the Largest Ideological Group in U.S.|author=Gallup, Inc.|work=Gallup.com|date=January 12, 2012}}

A 2015 Gallup poll found that socially liberal views have consistently been on the rise in the United States since 1999.{{cite web|last=Jones|first=Jeffery|title=On Social Ideology, the Left Catches Up to the Right|url=http://www.gallup.com/poll/183386/social-ideology-left-catches-right.aspx|date=22 May 2015}} As of 2015, there is a roughly equal number of socially liberal Americans and socially conservative Americans (31% each) and the socially liberal trend continues to rise. In early 2016, Gallup found that more Americans identified as ideologically conservative (37%) or moderate (35%) rather than liberal (24%), but that liberalism has slowly been gaining ground since 1992, standing at a 24-year high.{{cite web|last=Saad|first=Lydia|title=Conservatives Hang On to Ideology Lead by a Thread|url=http://www.gallup.com/poll/188129/conservatives-hang-ideology-lead-thread.aspx|date=11 January 2016}}

The Northeast, Great Lakes region, parts of the Southwest, and the West Coast are the main liberal strongholds; the fraction of Massachusetts self-identified conservatives being as low as 21%.{{Cite web|last=Jones|first=Jeffrey M.|date=2019-02-22|title=Conservatives Greatly Outnumber Liberals in 19 U.S. States|url=https://news.gallup.com/poll/247016/conservatives-greatly-outnumber-liberals-states.aspx|url-status=live|access-date=2021-12-27|website=Gallup|language=en|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190222171445/https://news.gallup.com/poll/247016/conservatives-greatly-outnumber-liberals-states.aspx |archive-date=February 22, 2019 }}{{cite news|url=https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/12/politics/republicans-democrats-different-worlds/index.html|title=Republicans and Democrats increasingly really do occupy different worlds|last=Brownstein|first=Ronald|work=CNN|access-date=October 24, 2018|archive-date=October 24, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181024113248/https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/12/politics/republicans-democrats-different-worlds/index.html|url-status=live}} Voters in the urban cores of large metropolitan areas tend to be more liberal and Democratic. There is a clear urban–rural political divide within and among states.{{cite web |url=http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/ |title=The changing colors of America (1960–2004) |date=November 10, 2004 |access-date=January 6, 2012 |archive-date=January 6, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120106191556/http://www.princeton.edu/%7Ervdb/JAVA/election2004/ |url-status=live }}

{{expand section|date=March 2015}}

21st-century modern liberalism in the US advocates for government intervention on social issues. This includes a recognized, legal access to abortion and other reproductive rights for women.Dawn E. Johnsen, "A Progressive Reproductive Rights Agenda for 2020," in J. M. Balkin, ed. The Constitution in 2020 (2009) pp. 255–66 Modern liberals also tend to support police reform through government action, and Democratic mayors have campaigned on reforms for police misconduct including police brutality.{{Cite web |last=Pandey |first=Erica |title=Blue cities go red with conservative policies on crime |url=https://www.axios.com/2024/03/12/crime-democrat-states-republican |website=Axios|date=March 12, 2024 }} Furthermore, modern liberals have supported affirmative action for minority groups historically discriminated against,Marc Landy and Sidney M. Milkis, American Government: Balancing Democracy and Rights (2008) p. 696; Thomas R. Hensley, The Rehnquist Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy (1986–2001) (2006) p. 311 multilateralism and support for international institutions.Alan Wolfe, The Future of Liberalism (2010) p. xx

Another major social issue for modern liberals concerns LGBT rights. Starting in 2000, liberals have called for state recognition of gay marriage and anti-discrimination laws that for homosexuals.{{Cite journal |last=Held |first=Jacob M. |date=2007 |title=Gay Marriage, Liberalism, and Recognition: The Case for Equal Treatment |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40441460 |journal=Public Affairs Quarterly |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=221–233 |jstor=40441460 |issn=0887-0373}} In 2009, crimes motivated by prejudice to sexual orientation became recognized as federal hate crimes. Gay marriage was legalized in the United States following the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges and later codified by the Respect for Marriage Act, signed by President Joe Biden. Democrats and modern liberals reliably support transgender rights and have lobbied for anti-discrimination laws and expanded access to transgender healthcare.{{Cite web |last=Brown |first=Anna |title=Deep partisan divide on whether greater acceptance of transgender people is good for society |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/02/11/deep-partisan-divide-on-whether-greater-acceptance-of-transgender-people-is-good-for-society/ |access-date=2024-03-13 |website=Pew Research Center |date=February 11, 2022 |language=en-US}}

On economic issues, modern liberals in the 21st century like their 20th century counterparts have called for greater regulation and oversight on businesses.Stephen Brooks, Understanding American Politics (2009) p. 297 As income inequality grows in the United States, modern liberals tend to support tax increases on the wealthy.Lawrence R. Jacobs and Theda Skocpol, Health Care Reform and American Politics (2010) p. 96 Starting during the Obama administration, modern liberals have supported a system of universal healthcare for the United States and have made healthcare a major election issue.{{Cite web |last=Wolf |first=Zachary |date=2023-11-29 |title=Analysis: Obamacare has gotten popular. Trump doesn't care {{!}} CNN Politics |url=https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/29/politics/obamacare-trump-what-matters/index.html |access-date=2024-03-13 |website=CNN |language=en}}

Historian and advocate of liberalism Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. had explored in-depth the heritage of Jacksonian democracy in its influence on Franklin D. Roosevelt.Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Jackson (1945) Robert V. Remini, the biographer of Andrew Jackson, also said:

Jacksonian Democracy, then, stretches the concept of democracy about as far as it can go and still remain workable. ... As such it has inspired much of the dynamic and dramatic events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in American history—Populism, Progressivism, the New and Fair Deals, and the programs of the New Frontier and Great Society to mention the most obvious.{{cite book|author=Robert V. Remini|title=The Life of Andrew Jackson|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZkhmdWo95BsC&pg=PA307|year=2011|page=307|publisher=Harper Collins |isbn=9780062116635}}

In 1956, Schlesinger said that liberalism in the United States includes both a laissez-faire form and a government intervention 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 and his New Nationalism, Woodrow Wilson and his New Freedom, and Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. Out of these three reform periods there emerged the conception of a social welfare state, 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, better known as modern liberalism.Novak, William J. (Spring 2006). [http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/24.1/novak.html "The Not-So-Strange Birth of the Modern American State: A Comment on James A. Henretta's 'Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America'"]. {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20120803004534/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/24.1/novak.html|date=August 3, 2012}}. Law and History Review. 24: 1.

{{main|Progressive Era}}

{{progressivism|related}}

The progressive movement emerged in the 1890s and included intellectual reformers typified by sociologist Lester Frank Ward and economist Richard T. Ely.Sidney Fine, "Richard T. Ely, Forerunner of Progressivism, 1880–1901", Mississippi Valley Historical Review. (1951) 37#4 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1889359 in JSTOR] They transformed Victorian liberalism, retaining its commitment to civil liberties and individual rights while casting off its advocacy of laissez-faire economics. Ward helped define what would become the modern welfare state after 1933.Henry Steele, Commager, ed. Lester Ward and the Welfare State (1967) These often supported the growing working-class labor unions and sometimes even the socialists to their left. The Social Gospel movement was a Protestant intellectual movement that helped shape liberalism, especially from the 1890s to the 1920s. It applied Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean environment, child labor, inadequate labor unions, poor schools and the danger of war.Ronald C. White, Jr. and C. Howard Hopkins, The Social Gospel. Religion and Reform in Changing America (1975). Lyndon B. Johnson's parents were active in the Social Gospel and had a lifetime commitment to it, for he sought to transform social problems into moral problems. This helps explain his longtime commitment to social justice as exemplified by the Great Society and his commitment to racial equality. The Social Gospel explicitly inspired his foreign-policy approach to a sort of Christian internationalism and nation building.Randall B. Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (2006) pp 27, 465–66, 486 In philosophy and education, John Dewey was highly influential.Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (1991)

In 1900–1920, liberals called themselves progressives. They rallied behind Republicans led by Theodore Roosevelt and Robert M. La Follette as well as Democrats led by William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson to fight corruption, waste and big trusts (monopolies). They stressed ideals of social justice and the use of government to solve social and economic problems. Settlement workers such as Jane Addams were leaders of the liberal tradition.Joyce E. Williams and Vicky M. MacLean. "In search of the kingdom: The social gospel, settlement sociology, and the science of reform in America's progressive era." Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (2012) 48#4 pp: 339–362. 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.{{Cite book|last1=Rossinow|first1=Douglas Charles|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K1OYZQs4y0UC|title=Visions of Progress: The Left-liberal Tradition in America; on the purge see pp 188–92|last2=Rossinow|first2=Associate Professor of History Doug|date=2008|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|isbn=978-0-8122-4049-8|language=en}}

Political writer Herbert Croly helped to define the new liberalism through The New Republic magazine 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 proposed to raise the general standard of living by means of economic planning. Croly opposed aggressive unionization. In The Techniques of Democracy (1915), he also argued against both dogmatic individualism and dogmatic socialism.Wilfred McClay, Croly's progressive America (1998)

The historian Vernon Louis Parrington in 1928 won the Pulitzer Prize for Main Currents in American Thought. It was a highly influential intellectual history of America from the colonial era to the early 20th century. It was well written and passionate about the value of Jeffersonian democracy and helped identify and honor liberal heroes and their ideas and causes.Richard Hofstadter, "Parrington and the Jeffersonian Tradition," Journal of the History of Ideas (1941) 2#4 pp. 391–400 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2707018 in JSTOR] In 1930, Parrington argued: "For upwards of half a century creative political thinking in America was largely western agrarian, and from this source came those democratic ideas that were to provide the staple of a later liberalism".{{cite book|author=Vernon Louis Parrington|title=The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BMjq2DFvLrQC&pg=PA284|orig-year=1930|year=2013|publisher=Transaction Publishers|page=284|isbn=9781412851640}} In 1945, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. argued in The Age of Jackson that liberalism also emerged from Jacksonian democracy and the labor radicalism of the Eastern cities, thereby linking it to the urban dimension of Roosevelt's New Deal.{{cite book|author=Robert Allen Rutland|title=Clio's Favorites: Leading Historians of the United States, 1945–2000|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ziPtgWVXdUEC&pg=PA157|year=2000|publisher=University of Missouri Press|pages=157–59|isbn=9780826213167}}

In Congress, liberals during the Progressive Era influenced a number of reforms. As noted by William Allen White:

IN THE ELECTION of 1910 Kansas went overwhelmingly progressive Republican. The conservative faction was decisively divided. The same thing happened generally over the country north of the Mason and Dixon line. The progressive Republicans did not have a majority in either house of Congress. But they had a balance of power; amalgamation with a similar but smaller group of progressive Democrats under Bryan’s leadership gave the progressives a working majority upon most measures. They had seen the conservative Democrats and the conservative Republicans united openly, proudly, victoriously to save Speaker Cannon from the ultimate humiliation when his power was taken from him by his progressive partisans. So in the legislatures and the Congress that met in 1911 a strange new thing was revealed in American politics. Party lines were breaking down. A bipartisan party was appearing in legislatures and in the Congress. It was an undeclared third party. But when the new party appeared on the left, the conservative Democrats and the conservative Republicans generally coalesced in legislative bodies on the right. For the most part the right wing coalescents were in the minority. In Congress, on most measures, the leftwing liberals were able to command a majority. They united upon a railroad regulation bill. They united in promoting the income tax constitutional amendment. They united in submitting another amendment providing for the direct election of United States Senators, which was indeed revolutionary. But they were unable to unite in the passage of a tariff bill. Local interests in regional commodity industries like cotton, lumber, copper, wool, and textiles were able to form a conservative alliance which, under the leadership of President Taft in the White House, put through a tariff bill that was an offense to the nation. But otherwise the new party of reform which had grown up in ten years dominated politics in Washington and in the state legislatures north of the Ohio from New England to California.THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE, THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, NEW YORK, 1946, P.442

With its emphasis on a strong federal government over claims of state's rights, widespread entrepreneurship and individual freedom against the property rights of slave owners, Abraham Lincoln's presidency laid much of the groundwork for future liberal Republican governance.Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, "Lincoln is thus a powerfully American figure. ... He democratizes an elitist liberalism in the process of abolishing a 'feudal reaction'. ... The slate is wiped clean for the triumph of a theory of democratic capitalism implicit from the outset in the American liberal world." p. 198–199, Harcourt Brace, 1955, {{ISBN|9780156512695}}.

The Republican Party's liberal element in the early 20th century was typified by Theodore Roosevelt in the 1907–1912 period, although Roosevelt was more conservative at other points. Other liberal and moderate Republicans included Senator Robert M. La Follette and his sons in Wisconsin (from about 1900 to 1946) and Western leaders such as Senator Hiram Johnson in California, Senator George W. Norris in Nebraska, Senator Bronson M. Cutting in New Mexico, Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin in Montana and Senator William Borah in Idaho from about 1900 to about 1940. They were generally liberal in domestic policy as they supported unionsRuth O'Brien, Workers' Paradox: The Republican Origins of New Deal Labor Policy, 1886–1935 (1998) p 15 and much of the New Deal. However, they were intensely isolationist in foreign policy.Robert Johnson, The peace progressives and American foreign relations (1995) This element died out by the 1940s. Starting in the 1930s, a number of mostly Northeastern Republicans took modern liberal positions regarding labor unions, spending and New Deal policies. They included Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota,Kristoffer Smemo, "A "New Dealized" Grand Old Party: Labor and the Emergence of Liberal Republicanism in Minneapolis, 1937–1939." Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas (2014) 11#2 pp: 35–59. Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, Governor Earl Warren of California,Kristoffer Smemo, "The Little People's Century: Industrial Pluralism, Economic Development, and the Emergence of Liberal Republicanism in California, 1942–1946." Journal of American History (2015) 101#4 pp: 1166–1189. Senator Clifford P. Case of New Jersey, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., of Massachusetts, Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut (father of George H. W. Bush), Senator Jacob K. Javits of New York, Governor and later Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, Senator George Aiken of Vermont, Governor William Scranton of Pennsylvania and Governor George Romney of Michigan.Nicol C. Rae, The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans: From 1952 to the Present (1989) The most notable of them all was Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York.Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller (2014)

While the media often called them Rockefeller Republicans, 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 provision they could administer it more efficiently. They opposed the Democratic big city machines while welcoming support from labor unions and big businesses alike. Religion was not high on their agenda, but they were strong believers in civil rights for African-Americans and women's rights and most liberals were pro-choice. They were also strong environmentalists and supported higher education. In foreign policy, they were internationalists, throwing their support to the moderate{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GP-QgnQ962QC&q=dwight+eisenhower+moderate+conservative&pg=PA128|title=The Politics of Ideas|isbn=9780791450437|last1=White|first1=John Kenneth|last2=Green|first2=John C.|last3=Green|first3=Professor John C.|date=August 9, 2001|publisher=SUNY Press }} Dwight D. Eisenhower over the conservative leader Robert A. Taft in 1952. They were often called "the Eastern Establishment" by conservatives such as Barry Goldwater.Rae, The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans: From 1952 to the Present (1989) The Goldwater conservatives fought this establishment, defeated Rockefeller in the 1964 primaries and eventually retired most of its members, although some such as Senator Charles Goodell and Mayor John Lindsay in New York became Democrats.Timothy J. Sullivan, New York State and the rise of modern conservatism: redrawing party lines (2009) p 142 As President, Richard Nixon adopted many of the liberals' positions regarding the environment, welfare and the arts. After Congressman John B. Anderson of Illinois bolted the party in 1980 and ran as an independent against Reagan, the liberal Republicans element faded away. Their old strongholds in the Northeast and West Coast are now mostly held by Democrats.Matthew Levendusky, The Partisan Sort: How Liberals Became Democrats and Conservatives Became Republicans (2009)

{{main|New Deal}}

President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to office in 1933 amid the economic calamity of the Great Depression, offering the nation a New Deal intended to alleviate economic desperation and joblessness, provide greater opportunities and restore prosperity. His presidency was the longest in American history, lasting from 1933 to his death 1945 and 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 were created to promote economic development and a social security system was established. The Roosevelt administration was assisted in its endeavors by progressives in Congress, with the congressional midterm elections of 1934 returning a more radical House of Representatives that was prepared to support progressive, new liberal measures.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A4eg7dHZlFcC&q=peter+clements+1934+more+radical+house+of+representatives&pg=PT125|title=Access to History for the IB Diploma: The Great Depression and the Americas ... – Peter Clements – Google Books|isbn=9781444156553|last1=Clements|first1=Peter|date=August 3, 2012|publisher=Hodder Education }} Also, while "during the Seventy-Third Congress, the House had been considered the more progressive body, now, in the new Seventy-Fourth, the senate was the more progressive chamber. Democrats added nine pro-New Deal senators, including Missouri’s Harry S. Truman, who pledged 100 percent cooperation to President Roosevelt and his policies."The Laws That Shaped America Fifteen Acts of Congress and Their Lasting Impact By Dennis W. Johnson, 2009, P.156 As noted by J. Richard Piper:

As the "new" liberalism crystallized into its dominant form by 1935, both houses of Congress continued to provide large voting majorities for public policies that were generally dubbed "liberal". Conservatives constituted a distinct congressional minority from 1933 to 1937 and appeared threatened with oblivion for a time.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u93Mj3A-tH8C&q=conservative+78th+Congress&pg=PA31|title=Ideologies and Institutions|isbn=9780847684595|last1=Richard Piper|first1=J.|year=1997|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield }}

Conservative strength in Congress was diminished following the 1936 midterm elections. In the Senate there were now 28 conservatives, at least 8 to 10 less than at the end of the 1935 session. A similar situation existed in the House, with one study noting that "Roughly 30 Democrats who had already openly criticized many aspects of the New Deal returned. Together with some 80 conservative Republicans, they formed a conservative voting bloc of roughly 110, again slightly less than in 1935."Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal By James T. Patterson As noted by one source, a liberal Congress existed for much of Roosevelt's presidency:

We recognize that the best liberal legislature in American history was enacted following the election of President Roosevelt and a liberal Congress in 1932. After the mid-term congressional election setbacks in 1938, labor was faced with a hostile congress until 1946. Only the presidential veto prevented the enactment of reactionary anti-labor laws.Official Proceedings of the Annual Convention Indiana State Federation of Labor, 1949, P.216

Look back to the 1930’s and you can see how winning in mid-terms years affects the kind of laws that are passed. A tremendous liberal majority was swept in with Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. In the 1934 mid-term races that liberal majority was increased. After 1936 it went even higher.[https://books.google.com/books?id=hYLNAAAAMAAJ&dq=national+industrial+recovery+act+liberal+majority+congress&pg=PA211 THE SIGNALMAN’S JOURNAL, JULY 1950, P.211]

The New Deal programs to relieve the Great Depression are generally regarded as a mixed success in ending unemployment. At the time, many New Deal programs, especially the CCC, were popular. Liberals hailed them for improving the life of the common citizen and for 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.Harvard Sitkoff, ed. Fifty Years Later: The New Deal Evaluated (1985), a favorable liberal interpretation.

The New Deal consisted of three types of programs designed to produce relief, recovery and reform:William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932–1940 (1963)

• Relief was the immediate effort to help the one-third of the population that was hardest hit by the depression. Roosevelt expanded Herbert Hoover's Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) work relief program and added the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Public Works Administration (PWA) and starting in 1935 the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Also in 1935, the Social Security Act (SSA) and unemployment insurance programs were added. Separate programs such as the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration were set up for relief in rural America.
• Recovery was the goal of restoring the economy to pre-Depression levels. It involved greater spending of government funds in an effort to stimulate the economy, including deficit spending, dropping the 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 (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, businesses and labor. Reform measures included the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), regulation of Wall Street by the Securities Exchange Act (SEA), the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) for farm programs, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insurance for bank deposits enacted through the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 and the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also known as the Wagner Act, dealing with labor-management relations. Despite urgings by some New Dealers, there was no major antitrust program. Roosevelt opposed socialism in the sense of state ownership of the means of production and only one major program, namely the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), involved government ownership of the means of production (that is power plants and electrical grids). The conservatives feared the New Deal meant socialism and Roosevelt noted privately in 1934 that the "old line press harps increasingly on state socialism and demands the return to the good old days".Gary Dean Best, Pride, Prejudice, and Politics: Roosevelt Versus Recovery, 1933–1938 (1991), 179; quote on p. 61.

The New Deal was racially segregated as blacks and whites rarely worked alongside each other in New Deal programs. The largest relief program by far was the WPA which operated segregated units as did its youth affiliate the NYA.{{cite book|author=Charles L. Lumpkins|title=American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q8_ZBcXXRAYC&pg=PA179|year=2008|publisher=Ohio University Press|page=179|isbn=9780821418031}} Blacks were hired by the WPA as supervisors in the North. Of 10,000 WPA supervisors in the South, only 11 were black.{{cite book|author=Cheryl Lynn Greenberg|title=To Ask for an Equal Chance: African Americans in the Great Depression|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Rcdl9nafM2oC&pg=PA60|year=2009|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |page=60|isbn=9781442200517}} In the first few weeks of operation, CCC camps in the North were integrated. By July 1935, all the camps in the United States were segregated and blacks were strictly limited in the supervisory roles they were assigned.{{cite book|author=Kay Rippelmeyer|title=The Civilian Conservation Corps in Southern Illinois, 1933–1942|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ffupBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA98|year=2015|publisher=Southern Illinois Press|pages=98–99|isbn=9780809333653}} Kinker and Smith argue that "even the most prominent racial liberals in the New Deal did not dare to criticize Jim Crow".{{cite book|author1=Philip A. Klinkner|author2=Rogers M. Smith|title=The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780226443416|url-access=registration|year=2002|publisher=University of Chicago Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780226443416/page/130 130]|isbn=9780226443416}} Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes was one of the Roosevelt administration's most prominent supporters of blacks and was former president of the Chicago chapter of the NAACP. When Senator Josiah Bailey, Democrat of North Carolina, accused him in 1937 of trying to break down segregation laws, Ickes wrote him to deny it:

I think it is up to the states to work out their social problems if possible, and while I have always been interested in seeing that the Negro has a square deal, I have never dissipated my strength against the particular stone wall of segregation. I believe that wall will crumble when the Negro has brought himself to a high educational and economic status. ... Moreover, while there are no segregation laws in the North, there is segregation in fact and we might as well recognize this.Harold Ickes, The secret diary of Harold L. Ickes Vol. 2: The inside struggle, 1936–1939 (1954) p 115{{cite book|author=David L. Chappell|title=A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8jomttdSV5YC&pg=PA9|year=2009|pages=9–11|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press |isbn=9780807895573}}

The New Deal's record came under attack by New Left historians in the 1960s 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.Jerold S. Auerbach, "New Deal, Old Deal, or Raw Deal: Some Thoughts on New Left Historiography," Journal of Southern History, (1969) 35#1 pp 18–30 [https://www.jstor.org/pss/2204748 in JSTOR]Irwin Unger, "The 'New Left' and American History: Some Recent Trends in United States Historiography," American Historical Review, (1967) 72#4 pp 1237–1263 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1847792 in JSTOR]

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.Alonzo Hamby, For the Survival of Democracy: Franklin Roosevelt and the World Crisis of the 1930s (2004) Liberals split on foreign policy as many followed Roosevelt while others such as John L. Lewis of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, historian Charles A. Beard and the Kennedy Family opposed him. However, Roosevelt added new conservative supporters such as Republicans Henry Stimson (who became his Secretary of War in 1940) and Wendell Willkie (who worked closely with Roosevelt after losing to him in the 1940s election). Anticipating the post-war period, Roosevelt strongly supported proposals to create a United Nations 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, except that Roosevelt learned from Wilson's mistakes regarding the League of Nations. For instance, Roosevelt included Republicans in shaping foreign policy and insisted the United States have a veto at the United Nations.Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley, FDR and the creation of the UN (1997)

American liberalism of the Cold War era was the immediate heir to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and the somewhat more distant heir to the progressives 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 and Hubert Humphrey expelled the far-left from labor unions and the New Deal coalition 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 and AT&T while rejecting the structural transformation dreamed of by earlier left-liberals. The far-left had its last hurrah in Henry A. Wallace'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.Rossinow (2008); Hamby (1992)

Most prominent and constant among the positions of Cold War liberalism were the following:

• Support for a domestic economy built on a balance of power between labor (in the form of organized unions) and management (with a tendency to be more interested in large corporations than in small business).
• 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).
• An embrace of Keynesian economics. By way of compromise with political groupings to their right, this often became in practice military Keynesianism.Herbert Stein, Presidential Economics: The Making of Economic Policy From Roosevelt to Clinton (3rd ed. 1994)

In some ways, this resembled what in other countries was referred to as social democracy;{{cite book |last=Gerstle |first=Gary |author-link=Gary Gerstle |date=2022 |title=The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era |url=https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-neoliberal-order-9780197519646?cc=us&lang=en& |location= |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=6 |isbn=978-0197519646}} however, American liberals never widely endorsed nationalization of industry like European social democrats, instead favoring regulation for public benefit. In the 1950s and 1960s, both major American political parties included liberal and conservative factions. The Democratic Party included the Northern and Western liberals on one hand and the generally conservative Southern whites on the other. Difficult to classify were the Northern big city Democratic political machines. The urban machines had supported New Deal economic policies, but they 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 citiesJules Witcover, Party of the People: A History of the Democrats (2003) The Republican Party included the moderate-to-liberal Wall Street and the moderate-to-conservative Main street. The more liberal wing, strongest in the Northeast, was far more supportive of New Deal programs, labor unions and an internationalist foreign policy.Richard Norton Smith, Thomas E. Dewey and His Times (1984) Support for anti-Communism sometimes came at the expense of civil liberties. For example, ADA co-founder and archetypal Cold War liberal Hubert Humphrey unsuccessfully sponsored in 1950 a Senate bill to establish detention centers where those declared subversive by the President could be held without trial.Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (2003) Nonetheless, liberals opposed McCarthyism and were central to McCarthy's downfall.Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (1991)

In domestic policy during the Fifth Party System (1932–1966), liberals seldom had full control of government, but conservatives never had full control in that period either. According to Jonathan Bernstein, neither liberals nor Democrats controlled the House of Representatives very often from 1939 through 1957, although a 1958 landslide gave liberals real majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time in twenty years. However, Rules Committee reforms and others were carried out following this landslide as liberals saw that House procedures "still prevented them from using that majority". The conservative coalition was also important (if not dominant) from 1967 through 1974, although Congress had a liberal Democratic majority from 1985 to 1994. As also noted by Bernstein, "there have only been a handful of years (Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term, 1961–1966, Jimmy Carter's presidency, and the first two years of Clinton's and Barack Obama's presidencies) when there were clear, working liberal majorities in the House, the Senate and the White House".{{cite web|url=http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-15/democratic-party-wasn-t-always-liberal|title=Democratic Party Wasn't Always Liberal|author=Jonathan Bernstein|date=September 15, 2014|work=BloombergView.com}}

A number of progressive laws were also approved during the course of the Fifth Party System.{{Cite web|url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000069162|title=Annual digest of state and federal labor legislation enacted|date=July 14, 1935|pages=v|publisher=Bureau of Labor Standards|via=Hathi Trust}}{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CFZ_1XDW2UYC&dq=The+people+asked+for+higher+minimum+wages+and+the+Congress+lifted+the+wage+floor+from+40+to+75+cents+an+hour+.+The+people+asked+for+rent+control+and+the+Congress+extended+rent+ceilings+on+a+basis+fair+to+tenants+and+landlords&pg=SL1-PA7099|title=Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress|first=United States|last=Congress|date=July 14, 1950|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|via=Google Books}}{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yykhAQAAMAAJ&dq=The+Democratic+fact+book+1974&pg=PP1|title=Democratic Fact Book 1974|date=July 14, 1976|publisher=Democratic National Committee|via=Google Books}}[https://books.google.com/books?id=zJIy35hR5TIC&dq=food+stamp+act+1964+southern+democrats&pg=PA79 The Mild Voice of Reason Deliberative Democracy and American National Government By Joseph M. Bessette, 1997, P.79][https://books.google.com/books?id=rM-dCwAAQBAJ&dq=The+93rd+Congress+(Second+Part):+Key+Facts+August+9,+1974,+through+December+20,+1974,+the+remainder+of+the+Congress+during+the+Ford+administration&pg=PA91 Congress, Presidents, and American Politics Fifty Years of Writings and Reflections By Lee H. Hamilton, 2016, P.91][https://books.google.com/books?id=VsvfKxfBAygC&dq=88th+congress+appalachia&pg=PA23910 THE LEGISLATIVE RECORD OF THE 88TH CONGRESS, 2D SESSION, AND A REVIEW OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF OVER THE PAST 4 YEARS]{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KpgjAQAAMAAJ&dq=Mike+Mansfield+90th+congress+legislative+record&pg=PR1|title=Summary of the Legislative Record and Digest of Major Accomplishments, 90th Congress, 2d Session, January 15, 1968, to October 14, 1968, Together with a Statement|first=Mike|last=Mansfield|date=July 14, 1968|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|via=Google Books}}{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PpgjAQAAMAAJ&dq=Legislative+summary+accomplishments+91st+Congress&pg=PR22|title=Summary of Major Accomplishments of the Ninety-first Congress, January 3, 1969, to January 2, 19721: Together with a Statement by the Hon. Mike Mansfield, Senate Majority Leader|first=United States Congress|last=Senate|date=July 14, 1972|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|via=Google Books}}{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ytIbAAAAIBAJ&dq=Food+stamps+1969+mcgovern&pg=PA14&article_id=7527,2681473|title=The Pittsburgh Press|publisher=The Pittsburgh Press|via=Google Books}} Later, during the Reagan-Bush years, congressional majorities voted in favor of a number of liberal measures,{{Cite web|url=https://aflcio.org/scorecard|title=Legislative Scorecard | AFL-CIO|website=aflcio.org}} while a number of progressive labor measures were also introduced on a State level, concerning such matters as sexual harassment,{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1981/01/art4full.pdf|title=State labor legislation enacted in 1980 Richard R. Nelson, P.21}} safeguards from employer retaliation against an employee reporting a violation of law or participating in an enforcement proceeding,{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1982/01/art5full.pdf|title=State labor legislation enacted in 1981 Richard R. Nelson, P.31}} equal pay,{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1983/01/art6full.pdf|title=State labor legislation enacted in 1982 Richard R. Nelson, P.44}} the right of employees to receive information on toxic substances,{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1984/01/art6full.pdf|title=State labor legislation enacted in 1983 Richard R. Nelson, P.59}} minimum wage rates,{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1985/01/art3full.pdf|title=State labor legislation enacted in 1984 Richard R. Nelson, P.27}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1986/01/art3full.pdf|title=State labor legislation enacted in 1985 Richard R. Nelson, P.34}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1987/01/art4full.pdf|title=State labor legislation enacted in 1986 Richard R. Nelson, P.49}} parental leave,[https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1988/01/art4full.pdf State labor laws: changes during 1987 Richard R. Nelson, P.39]{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1993/01/art3full.pdf|title=State labor legislation enacted in 1992 Richard R. Nelson, P.36}} discrimination,{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1989/01/art4full.pdf|title=State labor legislation enacted in 1988 Richard R. Nelson, P.42}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1992/01/art4full.pdf|title=State labor legislation enacted in 1991 Richard R. Nelson, P.41}} meal periods,{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1990/01/art4full.pdf|title=State labor legislation enacted in 1989 Richard R. Nelson, P.38}} and occupational safety and health.{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1991/01/art4full.pdf|title=State labor legislation enacted in 1990 Richard R. Nelson, P.43}}

Until he became president, liberals generally did not see Harry S. Truman 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 (ADA) supported Truman's liberal Fair Deal proposals to continue and expand the New Deal. Alonzo 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 argued that the liberal task was to spread the benefits of abundance throughout society by stimulating economic growth. Agriculture Secretary Charles F. Brannan 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 his unrealistic confidence in the possibility of uniting urban labor and farm owners who distrusted rural insurgency. The conservative coalition of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats in Congress effectively blocked the Fair Deal and nearly all liberal legislation from the late 1930s to 1960.Ira Katznelson, Kim Geiger and Daniel Kryder. "Limiting Liberalism: The Southern Veto in Congress, 1933–1950," Political Science Quarterly Vol. 108, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 283–306 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2152013 in JSTOR] The Korean War made military spending the nation's priority.Alonzo L. Hamby, "The Vital Center, the Fair Deal, and the Quest for a Liberal Political Economy", American Historical Review, June 1972, Vol. 77 Issue 3, pp 653–78 [https://www.jstor.org/pss/1870345 online at JSTOR] Under Truman, the number of Federal grant programmes more than doubled to 71.Government and Politics of the United States Second Edition by Nigel Bowles, 1998, P.306 In the 1960s, Stanford University historian Barton Bernstein repudiated Truman for failing to carry forward the New Deal agenda and for excessive anti-Communism at home.Barton J. Bernstein, "America In War and Peace: The Test of Liberalism" in Bernstein, ed., Towards A New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (1969), 289–291

Combating conservatism was not high on the liberal agenda, for the liberal ideology was so intellectually dominant by 1950 that the literary critic Lionel Trilling could note that "liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition ... . [T]here are no conservative or reactionary ideas in circulation."Douglas T. Miller and Marion Nowak, The fifties: the way we really were (1977) p 238 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 II lost in two landslides and presented few new liberal proposals apart from a suggestion for a worldwide ban on nuclear tests. As Barry Karl noted, Stevenson "has suffered more at hands of the admirers he failed than he ever did from the enemies who defeated him".Barry D. Karl, "Deconstructing Stevenson, or Badly for Adlai," Reviews in American History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1977), pp. 426–432, quote at p. 428 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2701022 in JSTOR] Many liberals bemoan the willingness of Democratic leaders Lyndon B. Johnson and Sam Rayburn to collaborate in Congress with Eisenhower and the commitment of the AFL–CIO unions and most liberal spokesmen such as Senators Hubert Humphrey and Paul Douglas to anti-Communism at home and abroad. They decry the weak attention most liberals paid to the nascent civil rights movement.Kent M. Beck, "What was Liberalism in the 1950s?" Political Science Quarterly Vol. 102, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 233–258 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2151351 in JSTOR]

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.David Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (1996) On labor side was the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) which merged into the AFL–CIO in 1955,Karen Orren, "Union Politics and Postwar Liberalism in the United States, 1946–1979," Studies in American Political Development (1986) 1:219–28 the United Auto Workers (UAW),Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945–1968 (1995); union lobbyists and the Committee on Political Education (COPE)Alan Draper, A Rope of Sand: The AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education, 1955–1967 (1989) which organized turnout campaigns and publicity at elections. Walter Reuther of the UAW was the leader of liberalism in the labor movement and his autoworkers generously funded the cause.John Barnard, American Vanguard: The United Auto Workers during the Reuther Years, 1935–1970, (2004) The main liberal organizations included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),Simon Topping, "'Supporting Our Friends and Defeating Our Enemies': Militancy and Nonpartisanship in the NAACP, 1936–1948," Journal of African American History Vol. 89, No. 1 (Winter, 2004), pp. 17–35 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4134044 in JSTOR] the American Jewish Congress (AJC), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the National Committee for an Effective Congress (NCEC) and the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA).Steven M. Gillon, Politics and Vision: The ADA and American Liberalism, 1947–1985 (1987)

Key liberal leaders in Congress included Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota,Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey (2003) Paul Douglas of Illinois,Roger Biles, Crusading Liberal: Paul H. Douglas of Illinois (2002) Henry Jackson of Washington,Robert Gordon Kaufman, Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics (2000) Walter Mondale of MinnesotaSteven M. Gillon, The Democrats' Dilemma: Walter F. Mondale and the Liberal Legacy (1992) and Claude Pepper of Florida in the SenateMichael Foley, The New Senate: Liberal Influence on a Conservative Institution, 1959–1972 (1980) Leaders in the House included Representatives Frank Thompson of New Jersey, Richard Bolling of Missouri and other members of the Democratic Study Group.{{cite journal |first=Arthur G. |last=Stevens |title=Mobilization of Liberal Strength in the House, 1955–1970: The Democratic Study Group |journal=American Political Science Review |volume=68 |issue=2 |year=1974 |pages=667–681 |doi=10.2307/1959512 |jstor=1959512 |s2cid=147337829 |display-authors=etal}} Although for years they had largely been frustrated by the conservative coalition, the liberal coalition suddenly came to power in 1963 and were ready with proposals that became central to the Great Society.{{cite journal |first=Daniel |last=Disalvo |title=The Politics of a Party Faction: The Liberal-Labor Alliance in the Democratic Party, 1948–1972 |journal=Journal of Policy History |volume=22 |issue=3 |year=2010 |pages=269–299 |doi=10.1017/S0898030610000114 |s2cid=154735666 }} Humphrey's liberal legacy is bolstered by his early leadership in civil rights and undermined by his long support of the Vietnam War. His biographer Arnold Offner says he was, "the most successful legislator in the nation’s history and a powerful voice for equal justice for all."Arnold A. Offner, Hubert Humphrey: The Conscience of the Country (Yale University Press, 2018) p. 394. Offner states that Humphrey was:

A major force for nearly every important liberal policy initiative...putting civil rights on his party’s and the nation’s agenda [in 1948] for decades to come. As senator he proposed legislation to effect national health insurance, for aid to poor nations, immigration and income tax reform, a Job Corps, the Peace Corps, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the path breaking 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty...[He provided] masterful stewardship of the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act through the Senate.Offner, p. x.

Intellectuals and writers were an important component of the coalition at this point.Richard H. Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s (1989) 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 magazines such as The New Republic, Saturday Review, The Atlantic Monthly and Harpers.S. Samuel Shermis and James L. Barth, "Liberal Intellectual Journals and their Functions in Shaping the Definition of Social Problems," Indiana Social Studies Quarterly, 1981, Vol. 34 Issue 1, pp 52–69 Also active in the arena of ideas were literary criticsEthan Goffman and Daniel Morris, The New York public intellectuals and beyond: exploring liberal humanism, Jewish identity, and the American protest tradition (2009) such as Lionel Trilling and Alfred Kazin, economistsRobert Sobel, The Worldly Economists (1980). such as Alvin Hansen, John Kenneth Galbraith,Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics (2005) James Tobin and Paul Samuelson as well as political scientists such as Robert A. Dahl and Seymour Martin Lipset and sociologists such as David Riesman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.Robert A. Katzmann, ed. Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The Intellectual in Public Life (2004) Representative was the historian Henry Steele Commager, 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, Daniel Boorstin, Richard Hofstadter and C. Vann Woodward.Neil Jumonville, Henry Steele Commager: Midcentury Liberalism and the History of the Present (1999) Perhaps the most prominent of all was Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., whose books on Andrew Jackson and on Roosevelt and the Kennedy brothers as well as 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.Stephen P. Depoe, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and the Ideological History of American Liberalism (1994)

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.Andy Lindstrom, "Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998): An American Mind in the American Century", Research in Review (Fall 1999) [http://www.rinr.fsu.edu/fallwinter99/features/commager.html online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101223073033/http://www.rinr.fsu.edu/fallwinter99/features/commager.html |date=December 23, 2010 }} Other experts have traced the relative decline of intellectuals to their concern race, ethnicity and genderMatt Bokovoy, "Strange Species: The Boomer University Intellectual," Reviews in American History vol. 35 #2 (2007) 297–306, esp. p. 299 and scholarly antiquarianism.Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: Politics and Culture in the Age of Academe (1987)

{{main|Great Society}}

The climax of liberalism came in the mid-1960s with the success of President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969) in securing congressional passage of his Great Society 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.Robert Dallek, Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (2004)Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (1994) Under Johnson's leadership, as noted by one study, "more than 200 new Federal programmes of grants to States, cities, counties, school districts, local communities and charities were authorized."Government and Politics of the United States Second Edition by Nigel Bowles, 1998, P.307 According to historian Joseph Crespino:

It has become a staple of twentieth-century historiography that Cold War concerns were at the root of a number of progressive political accomplishments in the postwar period: a high progressive marginal tax rate that helped fund the arms race and contributed to broad income equality; bipartisan support for far-reaching civil rights legislation that transformed politics and society in the American South, which had long given the lie to America’s egalitarian ethos; bipartisan support for overturning an explicitly racist immigration system that had been in place since the 1920s; and free health care for the elderly and the poor, a partial fulfillment of one of the unaccomplished goals of the New Deal era. The list could go on.Joseph Crespino, "A Nation Ruled by Its Fears" Reviews in American History, 48#1 (March 2020), pp. 119–123, quoting p. 123. https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2020.0016

As 21st-century 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.David Edwin Harrell Jr., Edwin S. Gaustad, John B. Boles, Sally Foreman Griffith, Randall M. Miller, Randall B. Woods, Unto a Good Land: A History of the American People (2005) pp. 1052–53

Johnson was rewarded with an electoral landslide in 1964 against conservative Barry Goldwater which broke the decades-long control of Congress by the conservative coalition; however, the Republicans bounced back in 1966 and as the Democratic Party splintered five ways Republicans elected Richard Nixon in 1968. Faced with a generally liberal Democratic Congress during his presidency,Ballard C. Campbell, [https://books.google.com/books?id=VitlO1mWxzAC&dq=liberal+majority+Congress+1972&pg=RA1-PA1972 Disasters, Accidents, and Crises in American History: A Reference Guide to the Nation's Most Catastrophic Events]. Infobase Publishing, 2008. Page 349. Retrieved on July 15, 2013. Nixon used his power over executive agencies to obstruct the authorization of programs that he was opposed to. As noted by one observer, Nixon "claimed the authority to 'impound,' or withhold, money Congress appropriated to support them". Nevertheless, Nixon largely continued the New Deal and Great Society programs he inherited.Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (1994) pp 20–21 Conservative reaction would come with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980–1989 (2009) In addition, throughout the Sixties and Seventies Congresses dominated by the Democrats carried out a range of social initiatives. According to one study, "Democrats at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue between 1961 and 1969, and persisting Democratic majorities thereafter, did not so much extend the range of New Deal social programmes as take wholly new initiatives in urban, social, transportation, and educational policy which their successors have been obliged to defend politically and fiscally."Government and Politics of the United States Second Edition by Nigel Bowles, 1998, P.95-96 Also, "Congresses dominated by Democrats (and often liberals) between 1964 and 1977 passed a panoply of environmental, health, safety, labour, product standards and civil rights laws and regulations."Government and Politics of the United States Second Edition by Nigel Bowles, 1998, P.242

{{see also|Civil rights movement}}

Cold War liberalism emerged at a time when most African Americans, especially in the South, 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 or provision in the Democratic Party platform. Black activists, most prominently Martin Luther King Jr., escalated the bearer agitation throughout the South, especially in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1963 Birmingham campaign, 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, culminating in the events of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. 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 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.James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (Oxford University Press 1996) pp 482–85, 542–46Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (2nd ed. Hill and Wang, 2008), pp 152–53

During the mid-1960s, relations between white liberals and the civil rights movement became increasingly strained as civil rights leaders accused liberal politicians of temporizing and procrastinating. Although President Kennedy sent federal troops to compel the University of Mississippi to admit African American James Meredith in 1962 and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. toned down the 1963 March on Washington at Kennedy's behest, the failure to seat the delegates of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic 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 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,{{citation needed|date=September 2008}} not unlike that of Democratic political machines in large cities. This put them on a collision course with urban machine politicians. 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.

Liberals were latecomers to the movement for equal rights for women. Generally, they agreed with Eleanor Roosevelt on the issue of women and the perceived need for special protections, especially regarding hours of work, night work and physically heavy work.{{cite book|author=Nancy Woloch|title=A Class by Herself: Protective Laws for Women Workers, 1890s–1990s|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_R_3BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA173|year=2015|publisher=Princeton UP|page=173|isbn=9781400866366}} The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) had first been proposed in the 1920s by Alice Paul and appealed primarily to middle-class career women. At the Democratic National Convention in 1960, a proposal to endorse the ERA was rejected after it met explicit opposition from liberal groups including labor unions, AFL–CIO, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), American Federation of Teachers, American Nurses Association, the Women's Division of the Methodist Church and the National Councils of Jewish, Catholic, and Negro Women.{{cite book|author=Jo Freeman|title=A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LF8ov6Vc4YQC&pg=PA209|year=2002|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|isbn=978-0-8476-9805-9|page=209}}

Some liberals moved to the right and became neoconservatives in the 1970s. Many were animated by foreign policy, taking a strong anti-Soviet and pro-Israel position as typified by Commentary, a Jewish magazine.Benjamin V. Balint, Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine that Transformed the Jewish Left into the Neoconservative Right (2010) Many had been supporters of Senator Henry M. Jackson, a Democrat noted for his strong positions in favor of labor and against Communism. Many neoconservatives joined the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and attacked liberalism vocally in both the popular media and scholarly publications.John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectual and Foreign Affairs 1945–1994 (2005) However, the rise of Trumpism from 2016 on shifted the Republican coalition away from consistent agreement with neoconservative foreign policy positions. Neoconservatives became a prominent force in the Never Trump movement, with some such as Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin reconciling with modern liberals and the realigning Democratic coalition.

{{see also|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".Michael Kazin, The populist persuasion: an American history (1998) p 196 This new element, says Kazin, worked to "topple the corrupted liberal order".Kazin, Populist persuasion p 197 As Maurice Isserman notes, the New Left "came to use the word 'liberal' as a political epithet".Maurice Isserman, The other American: the life of Michael Harrington (2001) p. 276 Slack (2013) argues that the New Left was more broadly speaking the political component of a break with liberalism that took place across several academic fields, namely philosophy, psychology and sociology. In philosophy, existentialism and neo-Marxism rejected the instrumentalism of John Dewey; in psychology, Wilhelm Reich, Paul Goodman, Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown rejected Sigmund Freud's teaching of repression and sublimation; and in sociology, C. Wright Mills rejected the pragmatism of Dewey for the teachings of Max Weber.{{cite web|url=http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/08/liberalism-radicalized-the-sexual-revolution-multiculturalism-and-the-rise-of-identity-politics|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130905031540/http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/08/liberalism-radicalized-the-sexual-revolution-multiculturalism-and-the-rise-of-identity-politics|url-status=unfit|archive-date=September 5, 2013|title=Liberalism Radicalized: The Sexual Revolution, Multiculturalism, and the Rise of Identity Politics|first=Kevin|last=Slack|website=The Heritage Foundation|access-date=October 4, 2018}}{{cite web |language=en |url=http://www.anamnesisjournal.com/issues/2-web-essays/88-the-false-genealogies-of-neo-progressivism |title=The False Genealogies of Neo-Progressivism |author=Slack, Kevin |website=Anamnesis Journal |access-date=2020-05-13 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130903045747/http://www.anamnesisjournal.com/issues/2-web-essays/88-the-false-genealogies-of-neo-progressivism |archive-date=2013-09-03}} 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. For example, massive demonstrations in France denounced American imperialism and its helpers in Western European governments.George N. Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 (1987) p 51Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente (2005) [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Power_and_Protest/n7Zmt_NFLaoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22against+the+centralized%22+inauthor:suri&pg=PA129&printsec=frontcover p 129 online]

The main activity of the New Left became opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War as conducted by liberal President Lyndon B. 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, chief foreign policy advisor of the 1968 Humphrey campaign, saying the New Left "threatened American liberalism" in a manner reminiscent of McCarthyism.Jeff Taylor, Where did the party go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian legacy (2006) p. 125 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".Peter Beinart, The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again p 49 Beinart concludes that "with the country divided against itself, contempt for Hubert Humphrey was the one thing on which left and right could agree".Beinart, The Good Fight p 49 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 contends: "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".E. J. Dionne, Why Americans Hate Politics (1991) p 37

{{see also|Vietnam War}}

While the civil rights movement isolated liberals from their erstwhile allies, the Vietnam War threw a wedge into the liberal ranks, dividing pro-war hawks such as Senator Henry M. Jackson from doves such as 1972 presidential candidate Senator George McGovern. As the war became the leading political issue of the day, agreement on domestic matters was not enough to hold the liberal consensus together.Melvin Small, At the Water's Edge: American Politics and the Vietnam War (2006) In the 1960 United States presidential campaign, John F. 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 Jr. By 1967, there was growing opposition from within liberal ranks, led in 1968 by Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy. After Democratic President Lyndon Johnson announced in March 1968 that he would not run for re-election, Kennedy and McCarthy fought each other for the nomination, with Kennedy besting McCarthy in a series of Democratic primaries. The assassination of Kennedy removed him from the race and Vice President Hubert Humphrey emerged from the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention with the presidential nomination of a deeply divided party. Meanwhile, Alabama Governor George Wallace announced his third-party run and 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 Nixon led a unified Republican Party to victory.

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 enacted many liberal policies and represented the more liberal wing of the Republican Party. Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency by executive order, expanded the national endowments for the arts and the humanities, began affirmative action policies, opened diplomatic relations with Communist China, starting the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks to reduce ballistic missile 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.Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (1995) 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 {{According to whom|date=January 2024}} – the liberal wing of his own party favored politicians such as Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton and Nixon placed an emphasis on law and order over civil liberties, with Nixon's Enemies List being 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.{{Explain|date=January 2024}} Pointing at this continuity, New Left leader Noam Chomsky (himself on Nixon's enemies list) has called Nixon "in many respects the last liberal president".[http://www.chomsky.info/articles/200006--.htm The Colombia Plan: April 2000] by Noam Chomsky, Z Magazine, June 2000.

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. Affirmative action in its most quota-oriented form was a Nixon administration policy. The Nixon War on Drugs 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. {{Citation needed|date=January 2024}} Additionally, Nixon's normalization of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China 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 argues that through his Supreme Court appointments Nixon effectively ended a decades-long expansion of economic rights along the lines of those put forward in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly.{{Cite book |last=Sunstein |first=Cass R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JYA4DgAAQBAJ |title=The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution — And Why We Need It More Than Ever |date=2009 |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-0-7867-3601-0 |access-date=January 12, 2025}}

{{main|Labor unions in the United States}}

Labor unions were central components of liberalism, operating through the New Deal coalition.Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism 1945–1968 (1995) 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 the Progressive Alliance, the Citizen-Labor Energy Coalition and the National Labor Committee broke from the dominant AFL–CIO which they saw as too conservative. In 1995, the liberals managed to take control of the AFL–CIO under the leadership of John Sweeney of the Service Employees International Union (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, broke away from the AFL–CIO to form its own coalition, the Change to Win Federation, to support liberalism, including Barack Obama's policies, especially health care reform. Stern retired in 2010.Andrew Battista, The Revival of Labor Liberalism (2008) 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 liberal policies, especially regarding votes for liberal politicians, a graduated income tax, government spending on social programs, and support for unions. They also support the conservative position of protectionism.Andrew Battista, The Revival of Labor Liberalism (University of Illinois Press, 2008) p 173 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 continue to rise, now covering 42% of local government workers.Robert L. Mathis, John H. Jackson, Human Resource Management (2007) p. 526 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."Jerry Brown's Pension Punt," [https://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748703294904575385020342632394.html Wall Street Journal (editorial) Aug. 5, 2010] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130514172102/http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748703294904575385020342632394.html |date=May 14, 2013 }}

{{main|Environmental movement in the United States}}

A new unexpected political discourse emerged in the 1970s centered on the environment.Samuel P. Hays, A History of Environmental Politics since 1945 (2000) 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 it aroused fears among lumbermen, farmers, ranchers, blue collar workers, automobile companies and oil companies whose economic interests were threatened by new regulations.Hays, Beauty, Health and Performance (1987) pp 287–328 As a result, conservatives tended to oppose environmentalism while liberals endorsed new measures to protect the environment.Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (2nd ed. 2005) Liberals supported the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club and were sometimes successful in blocking efforts by lumber companies and oil drillers to expand operations. Environmental legislation limited the use of DDT, reduced acid rain and protected numerous animal and plant species. Within the environmental movement, there was a small radical element that favored direct action rather than legislation.{{cite journal |first=Keith M. |last=Woodhouse |title=The Politics of Ecology: Environmentalism and Liberalism in the 1960s |journal=Journal for the Study of Radicalism |year=2008 |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=53–84 |doi=10.1353/jsr.0.0008 |doi-access=free }} By the 21st century, debates over taking major action to reverse global warming by and dealing with carbon emissions were high on the agenda. Unlike Europe, where green parties play a growing role in politics, the environmental movement in the United States has given little support to third parties.Larry Sabato and Howard R. Ernst, eds. Encyclopedia of American political parties and elections (2006) pp 1667–7

During the Nixon years and through the 1970s, the liberal consensus began to come apart and the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan as president marked the election of the first non-Keynesian administration and the first application of supply-side economics. 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.Krugman, Paul (2007). The Conscience of a Liberal. New York: W. W. Norton.

Organized labor, long a bulwark of the liberal consensus, was past the peak of its power in the United States 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, who challenged incumbent President Jimmy Carter 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. Historians often use 1979–1980 to date a philosophical realignment within the American electorate away from Democratic liberalism and toward Reagan Era conservatism;Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History 1974–2008 (2008) p 125Joseph R. Conlin, The American Past: A Survey of American History (2008) ch. 50 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.Stanley, Timothy Randolph, "'Sailing against the Wind': A Reappraisal of Edward Kennedy's Campaign for the 1980 Democratic Party Presidential Nomination," Journal of American Studies, Aug 2009, Vol. 43 Issue 2, pp 231–253

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 counter-revolution by the nation's democratic or majoritarian forces.Richard M. Abrams, America Transformed: Sixty Years of Revolutionary Change, 1941–2001 (2006), esp. pp ix and 125

The term Third Way represents various political positions which try to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of centre-right economic and left-leaning social policies.Bobbio, Norberto; Cameron, Allan.Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction. University of Chicago Press, 1997. {{ISBN|0-226-06245-7}}, {{ISBN|978-0-226-06245-7}}. p. 8. Third Way was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various center-left progressive movements in response to the ramifications of the collapse of international belief in the economic viability of the state economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism and the corresponding rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right.Jane Lewis, Rebecca Surender. Welfare State Change: Towards a Third Way?. Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. 3–4, 16. It supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities, and productive endowments, while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this.Jane Lewis, Rebecca Surender. Welfare State Change: Towards a Third Way?. Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 4. It emphasizes commitment to balanced budgets, providing equal opportunity combined with an emphasis on personal responsibility, decentralization of government power to the lowest level possible, encouragement of public-private partnerships, improving labor supply, investment in human development, protection of social capital and protection of the environment.Pauline Vaillancourt Rosenau. [https://books.google.com/books?id=GeTEPiQ77yoC The competition paradigm: America's romance with conflict, contest, and commerce]. Lanham, Maryland, USA; Oxford, England, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2003. Pp. 209.

File:Clinton Blair.jpg and Tony Blair, adherents of the Third Way]]

In the United States, Third Way adherents embrace fiscal conservatism to a greater extent than traditional social liberals and advocate some replacement of welfare with workfare and sometimes have a stronger preference for market solutions to traditional problems (as in pollution markets) while rejecting pure laissez-faire economics and other libertarian positions. The Third Way style of governing was firmly adopted and partly redefined during the presidency of Bill Clinton.The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House, John F Harris, Random House, 2005 With respect to presidents, the term Third Way was introduced by political scientist Stephen Skowronek, who wrote The Politics presidents Make (1993, 1997; {{ISBN|0-674-68937-2}}).[http://www.unm.edu/~pre/law/articles_advise/PolSci_Overlooked.htm An Overlooked Theory on Presidential Politics] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160225221559/http://www.unm.edu/~pre/law/articles_advise/PolSci_Overlooked.htm |date=February 25, 2016 }}, a October 31, 2003 article by Rick Valelly[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/11/23/regime_change/ Regime change], a November 23, 2003 article by Christopher Shea Third Way presidents "undermine the opposition by borrowing policies from it in an effort to seize the middle and with it to achieve political dominance. Think of Nixon's economic policies, which were a continuation of Johnson's "Great Society"; Clinton's welfare reform and support of capital punishment; and Obama's pragmatic centrism, reflected in his embrace, albeit very recent, of entitlements reform".{{cite web| title=The Federal Deficit Mess| first=Richard |last=Posner| author-link=Richard Posner| url=http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/07/the-federal-deficit-messposner.html| work=The Becker-Posner Blog| date=July 17, 2011 |quote=Obama resembles such Presidents as Nixon and Clinton in the following respect. They are what the political scientist Stephen Skowronek calls practitioners of Third Way politics (Tony Blair was another), who undermine the opposition by borrowing policies from it in an effort to seize the middle and with it to achieve political dominance. Think of Nixon's economic policies, which were a continuation of Johnson's "Great Society"; Clinton's welfare reform and support of capital punishment; and Obama's pragmatic centrism, reflected in his embrace, albeit very recent, of entitlements reform.| access-date=July 22, 2011}}

After Tony Blair came to power in the United Kingdom, Clinton, Blair and other leading Third Way adherents organized conferences in 1997 to promote the Third Way philosophy at Chequers in England.Sidney Blumenthal, The Clinton Wars, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003{{cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/771608.stm|title=BBC News – EUROPE – 'Third Way' gets world hearing|work=bbc.co.uk}} In 2004, several veteran Democrats founded a new think tank in Washington, D.C. called Third Way which bills itself as a "strategy center for progressives".{{Cite web|url=http://www.thirdway.org/|title=Third Way|website=www.thirdway.org}} Along with the Third Way think tank, the Democratic Leadership Council are also adherents of Third Way politics.{{cite web|url=http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=128&subid=187&contentid=895|title=DLC: About The Third Way|website=Ndol.org}} The Third Way has been heavily criticized by many social democrats and other socialists, such as anarchists, communists, and democratic socialists, as a betrayal of left-wing values. The Democratic Leadership Council shut down in 2011. Commenting on the Democratic Leadership Council's waning influence, Politico characterized it as "the iconic centrist organization of the Clinton years" that "had long been fading from its mid-'90s political relevance, tarred by the left as a symbol of 'triangulation' at a moment when there's little appetite for intra-party warfare on the center-right".{{cite news |title=Democratic Leadership Council will fold |first=Ben |last=Smith |work=Politico |date=February 7, 2011 |url=http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0211/Democratic_Leadership_Council_will_fold.html }} Specific definitions of Third Way policies may differ between Europe and the United States.{{cite web|url=http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4173 |author=Bashan, P. |date=November 5, 2002 |title=Is the Third Way at a Dead End? |publisher=Cato Institute |access-date=July 7, 2007 |url-status=unfit |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050905071531/http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4173 |archive-date=September 5, 2005 }}

Republican and staunch conservative George W. Bush won the 2000 president election in a tightly contested race that included multiple recounts in the state of Florida.{{cite news|last=Keating|first=Dan|title=Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush – But Study Finds Gore Might Have Won Statewide Tally of All Uncounted Ballots|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12623-2001Nov11.html|access-date=August 20, 2012|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=November 12, 2001|author2=Dan Balz}} The outcome was tied up in courts for a month until reaching the Supreme Court.[https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZPC.html George W. Bush, et al., Petitioners v. Albert Gore, Jr., et al.], 531 U.S. 98 (2000). Retrieved February 12, 2010. In the controversial ruling Bush v. Gore case on December 9,{{cite news|url=http://articles.cnn.com/2000-12-13/politics/cnn.poll_1_sampling-error-poll-usa-today?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS|title=Poll: Majority of Americans accept Bush as legitimate president|access-date=April 27, 2011|publisher=Turner Broadcasting System, Inc|date=December 13, 2000|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101029063356/http://articles.cnn.com/2000-12-13/politics/cnn.poll_1_sampling-error-poll-usa-today?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS|archive-date=October 29, 2010|df=mdy-all}} the Supreme Court reversed a Florida Supreme Court decision ordering a third recount, essentially ending the dispute and resulting in Bush winning the presidency by electoral vote, although he lost the popular vote to Democrat and incumbent Vice President Al Gore.{{cite web|url=http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm|title=2000 Official General Election Presidential Results|access-date=September 1, 2008|date=December 2001|publisher=Federal Election Commission}}

Bush's policies were deeply unpopular among American liberals, particularly his launching of the Iraq War which led to the return of massive protest politics in the form of opposition to the War in Iraq. Bush's approval rating went below the 50% mark in AP-Ipsos polling in December 2004.{{cite news|url=http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2007/03/10/2003351719|title=Bush's job approval rating creeps up in AP-Ipsos poll|work=Taipei Times|date=March 10, 2007|access-date=September 1, 2008|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080613223621/http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2007/03/10/2003351719 |archive-date=June 13, 2008|url-status=dead}} Thereafter, his approval ratings and approval of his handling of domestic and foreign policy issues steadily dropped. Bush received heavy criticism for his handling of the Iraq War, his response to Hurricane Katrina and to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, NSA warrantless surveillance, the Plame affair and Guantanamo Bay detention camp controversies.{{cite news|last=Kakutani|first=Michiko|title=Unchecked and Unbalanced|work=The New York Times|date=July 6, 2007|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/06/books/06book.html?pagewanted=all|access-date=September 1, 2008}} Polls conducted in 2006 showed an average of 37% approval ratings for Bush{{cite web|url=http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm|title=President Bush—Overall Job Rating|publisher=Polling Report|access-date=September 1, 2008}} which contributed to what Bush called the thumping of the Republican Party in the 2006 midterm elections.{{cite web|url=http://elections.us.reuters.com/top/news/usnN07478317.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070810120940/http://elections.us.reuters.com/top/news/usnN07478317.html|archive-date=August 10, 2007|date=November 8, 2006|url-status=dead|title=Bush admits Republicans took a "thumping" (Reuters)}}

When the financial system verged on total collapse during the 2008 financial crisis, Bush pushed through large-scale rescue packages for banks and auto companies that some conservatives in Congress did not support and led some conservative commentators to criticize Bush for enacting legislation they saw as not conservative and more reminiscent of New Deal liberal ideology.{{cite news |title=Conservatives Viewed Bailout Plan as Last Straw |author=Carl Hulse |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/business/27repubs.html?ref=business |newspaper=New York Times |date=September 26, 2008 |access-date=January 17, 2012}}William F. Buckley, [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/buckley-bush-not-a-true-conservative/ "Buckley: Bush Not a True Conservative"], CBS News, July 22, 2006, Retrieved from cbsnews.com August 25, 2009.Carl M. Cannon, Reagan's Disciple (PublicAffairs, 2008) p xii. In part due to backlash against the Bush administration, Barack Obama, seen by some as a liberal and progressive,{{cite journal |title=Almanac of American Politics (2008)|journal=National Journal |author=Michael Barone with Richard Cohen |page=538}} was elected to the presidency in 2008, the first African American to hold the office. With a clear Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress, Obama managed to pass a $814 billion stimulus spending program, new regulations on investment firms and a law to expand health insurance coverage.Jonathan Alter, The Promise: President Obama, Year One (2010) Led by the Tea Party movement, the Republicans won back control of one of the two Houses of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections.Dick Morris, [http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/10/20/the_new_republican_right_107653.html "The New Republican Right"], The Hill October 19, 2010

In reaction to ongoing financial crisis that began in 2008, protest politics continued into the Obama administration, most notably in the form of Occupy Wall Street.{{cite web | url=http://chronicle.com/article/Intellectual-Roots-of-Wall/129428/| title=Intellectual Roots of Wall St. Protest Lie in Academe – Movement's principles arise from scholarship on anarchy| access-date=February 23, 2012|work=The Chronicle of Higher Education| date=October 16, 2011}} The main issues are social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the undue influence of corporations on government—particularly from the financial services sector. The Occupy Wall Street slogan "We are the 99%" addresses the growing income inequality and wealth distribution in the United States between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population. Although some of these were cited by liberal activists and Democrats, this information did not fully become a center of national attention until it was used as one of the ideas behind the movement itself.{{cite web |title=Income Inequality |work=The New York Times |date=March 22, 2012|url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/income/income_inequality/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier |access-date=June 7, 2012}} A survey by Fordham University Department of Political Science found the protester's political affiliations to be overwhelmingly left-leaning, with 25% Democrat, 2% Republican, 11% Socialist, 11% Green Party, 12% Other and 39% independent.[https://www.fordham.edu/download/downloads/id/2538/occupy_wall_street_survey.pdf Occupy Wall Street Survey Results October 2011] By Professor Costas Panagopoulos, Fordham University, October 2011 While the survey also found that 80% of the protestors self-identified as slightly to extremely liberal, Occupy Wall Street and the broader Occupy movement has been variously classified as a "liberation from liberalism" and even as having principles that "arise from scholarship on anarchy".{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/07/occupy-liberation-from-liberalism |access-date=May 9, 2012 |newspaper=Guardian |title=Occupy's liberation from liberalism: the real meaning of May Day |first=David |last=Graeber |date= May 7, 2012 |location=London}}

During a news conference on October 6, 2011, President Obama said: "I think it expresses the frustrations the American people feel, that we had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, huge collateral damage all throughout the country ... and yet you're still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place."{{cite news|last=Memoli |first=Michael A. |url=http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-occupy-wall-street-20111006,0,1992639.story |title=Obama news conference: Obama: Occupy Wall Street protests show Americans' frustration |work=Los Angeles Times |date=July 13, 2011 |access-date=October 7, 2011}}{{cite news|last=Salazar |first=Cristian |url=http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9Q6U0O83.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111010021330/http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9Q6U0O83.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=October 10, 2011 |agency=Associated Press |title=Obama acknowledges Wall Street protests as a sign |work=BusinessWeek |date=October 6, 2011 |access-date=October 7, 2011}} Obama was re-elected President in November 2012, defeating Republican nominee Mitt Romney and sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2013. During his second term, Obama promoted domestic policies related to gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and called for full equality for LGBT Americans while his administration filed briefs which urged the Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 and California's Proposition 8 as unconstitutional. The shooting of Michael Brown and death of Eric Garner led to widespread protests (particularly in Ferguson, where Brown was shot) against perceived police militarization more generally and alleged police brutality against African Americans more specifically.{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/07/19/new-video-purports-to-show-aftermath-of-the-chokehold-that-led-to-eric-garners-death/

|title=New video purports to show aftermath of the chokehold that led to Eric Garner's death|author=Niraj Chokshi|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=July 19, 2014

|access-date=July 29, 2014}}{{cite news |first=Thomas |last=Gibbons-Neff |title=Military veterans see deeply flawed police response in Ferguson |date=August 14, 2014 |access-date=August 24, 2014 |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/08/14/military-veterans-see-deeply-flawed-police-response-in-ferguson/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140815130837/http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/08/14/military-veterans-see-deeply-flawed-police-response-in-ferguson/|archive-date=2014-08-15|url-status=dead}}

{{main|Freedom of speech in the United States}}

American liberals describe themselves as open to change and receptive to new ideas.{{cite magazine |last=Chait |first=Jonathan |date=February 22, 2005 |title=Fact Finders |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/61829/fact-finders |access-date=January 12, 2025 |magazine=The New Republic |issn=0028-6583}} Liberals tend to oppose the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in 2010 that a corporation's First Amendment right to free speech encompasses freedom to make unlimited independent expenditures for any political party, politician or lobbyist as they see fit. President Obama called 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."{{cite news |last=Liptak |first=Adam |date=January 21, 2010 |title=Justices, 5-4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22scotus.html |access-date=January 12, 2025 |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331}}

{{see also|History of the socialist movement in the United States}}

In general, liberalism opposes socialism when it is understood to mean an alternative to capitalism based on state ownership of the means of production. American liberals usually doubt that bases for political opposition and freedom can survive when power is vested in the state as it was under state-socialist regimes. 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, then there is no need for a rigid and oppressive bureaucracy. Since the 1950s, some liberal public intellectuals have moved further toward the allegation that free markets can provide better solutions than top-down economic planning when appropriately regulated. Economist Paul Krugman argued that in hitherto-state-dominated functions such as nation-scale energy distribution and telecommunications marketizations can improve efficiency dramatically.Paul Krugman, [https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/05/24/260257/index.htm "The Ascent of E-Man R.I.P.: The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit"], Fortune, May 24, 1999. He also defended a monetary policy—inflation targeting—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 postwar 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.The Cambridge Companion to Keynes, Roger Backhouse, Bradley W. Bateman, p 27. {{ISBN|978-0-521-84090-3}} Thomas Friedman is a liberal journalist who generally defends free trade as more likely to improve the lot of both rich and poor countries.[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-world-is-flat-by-thomas-l-friedman-755486.html "Review of The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman"], The Independent, Apr 29, 2005.{{cite book|author1=Martin Halliwell|author2=Catherine Morley|title=American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l2k5zrO23aAC&pg=PA151|year=2008|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|page=151|isbn=9780748626021}}

There is a fundamental split among liberals as to the role of the state. Historian H. W. Brands observes that "the growth of the state is, by perhaps the most common definition, the essence of modern American liberalism."H. W. Brands, review, in Journal of American History March 2008, Vol. 94 Issue 4, p 1227 According to Paul Starr, "[l]iberal constitutions impose constraints on the power of any single public official or branch of government as well as the state as a whole."Paul Starr, Freedom's Power: The History and Promise of Liberalism, Basic Books, 2008, {{ISBN|978-0-465-08187-5}}

According to cognitive linguist George Lakoff, 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 comes the rationale for many liberal positions. The second category is assistance to those who cannot assist themselves. A nurturing, philanthropic spirit is one that is considered good in liberal philosophy. This leads to the third category, namely 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.George Lakoff, Moral Politics, 2002

Liberalism increasingly shaped American intellectual life in the 1930s and 1940s, thanks in large part to two major two-volume studies that were widely read by academics, advanced students, intellectuals and the general public, namely Charles A. Beard and Mary Beard's The Rise of American Civilization (2 vol.; 1927) and Vernon L. Parrington's Main Currents in American Thought (2 vol.; 1927). The Beards exposed the material forces that shaped American history while Parrington focused on the material forces that shaped American literature. According to the Beards, virtually all political history involved the bitter conflict between the agrarians, farmers and workers led by the Jeffersonians and the capitalists led by the Hamiltonians. The Civil War marked a great triumph of the capitalists and comprised the Second American Revolution. Younger historians welcome the realistic approach that emphasized hardcore economic interest as a powerful force and downplayed the role of ideas.Clyde W. Barrow, More Than a Historian: The Political and Economic Thought of Charles A. Beard (2000). Parrington spoke to the crises at hand. According to historian Ralph Gabriel:

Main Currents attempted to trace the history of liberalism in the American scene for citizens who were caught in a desperate predicament. It was an age in which American liberalism set the United States, through the New Deal, on a Democratic middle-of-the-road course between the contemporary extremisms of Europe, that of Communism on one hand, and of Fascism on the other. ... The style of Main Currents was powered by Parrington's dedication to the cause of humane liberalism, by his ultimate humanistic, democratic faith. He saw the democratic dreams of the romantic first half of the 19th century as the climax of an epic story toward which early Americans moved and from which later Americans fell away.Ralph H. Gabriel, "Vernon Lewis Parrington", in Marcus Cunliffe and Robin W. Winks, eds., Pastmasters: Some essays on American historians (1969), pp 157, 161–62

Liberal readers immediately realized where they stood in the battle between Jeffersonian democracy and Hamiltonian privilege.John Higham, Writing American History (1970) p. 134 Neither the Beards nor Parrington paid any attention to slavery, race relations, or minorities. For example, the Beards "dismissed the agitations of the abolitionists as a small direct consequence because of their lack of appeal to the public".Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (1968) pp 302, 460. Princeton historian Eric F. Goldman helped define American liberalism for postwar generations of university students. The first edition of his most influential work appeared in 1952 with the publication of Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform, covering reform efforts from the Grant years to the 1950s. For decades, it was a staple of the undergraduate curriculum in history, highly regarded for its style and its exposition of modern American liberalism. According to Priscilla Roberts:

Lively, well-written, and highly readable, it provided an overview of eight decades of reformers, complete with arresting vignettes of numerous individuals, and stressed the continuities among successful American reform movements. Writing at the height of the Cold War, he also argued that the fundamental liberal tradition of the United States was moderate, centrist, and incrementalist, and decidedly non-socialist and non-totalitarian. While broadly sympathetic to the cause of American reform, Goldman was far from uncritical toward his subjects, faulting progressives of World War I for their lukewarm reception of the League of Nations, American reformers of the 1920s for their emphasis on freedom of lifestyles rather than economic reform, and those of the 1930s for overly tolerant attitude toward Soviet Russia. His views of past American reformers encapsulated the conventional, liberal, centrist orthodoxy of the early 1950s, from its support for anti-communism and international activism abroad and New Deal-style big government at home, to its condemnation of McCarthyism.Priscilla M. Roberts, "Goldman, Eric " in Kelly Boyd, ed., Encyclopedia of historians and historical writing. Vol. 1 (1999) pp. 474–75.

For the general public, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was the most widely read historian, social critic and public intellectual. Schlesinger's work explored the history of Jacksonian era and especially 20th-century American liberalism. His major books focused on leaders such as Andrew Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. He was a White House aide to Kennedy and his A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize. In 1968, Schlesinger wrote speeches for Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and the biography Robert Kennedy and His Times. He later popularized the term imperial presidency, warning against excessive power in the White House as typified by Richard Nixon. Late in his career, he came to oppose multiculturalism.John Patrick Diggins, ed., The Liberal Persuasion: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and the Challenge of the American Past (1997) [https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Persuasion-Schlesinger-Challenge-American/dp/B008SM2AIW excerpt]

{{See also|List of American liberals}}

{{see also|Democrat Party (epithet)}}

Since the 1970s, there has been a concerted effort from both the left and right to color the word liberal with negative connotations. As those efforts succeeded more and more, progressives and their opponents took advantage of the negative meaning to great effect. In the 1988 presidential campaign, Republican George H. W. Bush joked about his opponent's refusal to own up to the "L-word label". When Michael Dukakis finally did declare himself a liberal, the Boston Globe headlined the story "Dukakis Uses L-Word".{{cite book|author=Rosemarie Ostler|title=Slinging Mud: Rude Nicknames, Scurrilous Slogans, and Insulting Slang from Two Centuries of American Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cJFspOecgPUC&pg=PT146|year=2011|publisher=Penguin|page=146|isbn=9781101544136}} Conservative activists since the 1970s 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.{{cite book |title=The Politics of Selfishness: How John Locke's Legacy is Paralyzing America |author=Nevins, Paul L. |year=2010 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |location=Santa Barbara, CA |isbn=978-0-313-39351-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yFm1vRCVzigC}} Historian John Lukacs noted in 2004 that then-President George W. Bush, 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.{{cite journal |title=The Triumph and Collapse of Liberalism |journal=The Chronicle of Higher Education |year=2004 |author=Lukacs, John |url=http://chronicle.com/article/The-TriumphCollapse-of/9203/ |access-date=January 13, 2005}}

During the presidency of Gerald Ford, First Lady Betty Ford became known for her candid and outspoken liberal views regarding the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), pro-choice on abortion, feminism, equal pay, decriminalization of certain drugs, gun control and civil rights. She was a vocal supporter and leader in the women's movement and Ford was also noted for bringing breast cancer awareness to national attention following her 1974 mastectomy. Her outspoken liberal views led to ridicule and opposition from the conservative wing of the Republican Party and by conservative activists who referred to Ford as "No Lady" and thought her actions were unbecoming of a First Lady in an increasingly conservative Republican Party. Ronald Reagan's ridicule of liberalism is credited with transforming the word liberal into a derogatory epithet that any politician seeking national office would avoid.{{cite book |title=American Patriotism in a Global Society |author=Craige, Betty Jean |year=1996 |publisher=State University of New York Press |location=Albany, NY |isbn=978-0-7914-2960-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H2eo_h2OE2wC}} His speechwriters repeatedly contrasted "liberals" and "real Americans". For example, Reagan's then-Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt 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 American interests worldwide is credited by comparative literature scholar Betty Jean Craige with polarizing the United States. 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.

When George H. W. Bush employed the word liberal as a derogatory epithet during his 1988 presidential campaign,{{cite book |title=In Washington But Not of It: The Prophetic Politics of Religious Lobbyists |author=Hofrenning, Daniel J. B. |year=1995 |publisher=Temple University Press |location=Philadelphia, PA |isbn=978-1-56639-304-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I5zWDTt9dOsC}} he described himself as a patriot and described his liberal opponents as unpatriotic. Bush referred to liberalism as "the L-word" and sought to demonize opposing presidential candidate Michael Dukakis 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, said to Christians at the 1988 Republican National Convention: "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 Bush by moving closer to the political center.

Liberal 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, who commented that it is "unfortunate today that 'liberal' is used as a derogatory term".{{cite book |title=Liberalism and American Identity |author=Garry, Patrick M. |year=1992 |publisher=Kent State University Press |location=Kent, OH |isbn=978-0-87338-451-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jFcgqqpxxDwC}} 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".{{cite journal |title=Review of "American Liberalism: An Interpretation for Our Time" by John McGowan |journal=Political Science Quarterly |year=2008 |volume=123 |issue=4 |page=706 |author=Boyle, Kevin |doi=10.1002/j.1538-165x.2008.tb01827.x}} Republican political consultant Arthur J. Finkelstein 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 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".{{cite news |title=Arthur Finkelstein: Out Of Sight But In Control |author=Karl, Jonathan |date=October 10, 1996 |website=Cnn.com |url=http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/news/9610/10/karl.finkelstein/index.shtml |access-date=August 28, 2011}}

Democratic candidates and political liberals have sometimes shied away from the word liberal, in some cases identifying instead with terms such as progressive or moderate.{{cite news |title=Now Is Not the Time For National Unity! |author=von Hoffman, Nicholas |date=October 17, 2004 |newspaper=New York Observer |url=http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1117-28.htm |access-date=August 28, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111101959/http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1117-28.htm |archive-date=January 11, 2012 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}{{cite news |title=Should We Deep-Six the Term "Liberal" or Own Up to It? |author=Reardon, Kathleen |date=September 16, 2005 |newspaper=The Huffington Post |url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-reardon/should-we-deepsix-the-ter_b_7472.html? |access-date=August 28, 2011}} George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney accused their opponents of liberal elitism, softness, and pro-terrorism.{{cite book |title=Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Most Important Ideals |author=Alterman, Eric |year=2008 |publisher=Penguin Group |location=New York, NY |isbn=978-0-670-01860-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mhO41uVWOQIC}} Conservative political commentators such as Rush Limbaugh consistently used the word "liberal" as a pejorative label. When liberals shifted to the word "progressive" to describe their beliefs, conservative radio host Glenn Beck used "progressive" as an abusive label.{{cite journal |title=Reclaiming the Word 'Liberal' |journal=Liberty |year=2011 |author=Yeager, Leland B. |url=http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/496}} Historian Godfrey Hodgson notes the following: "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".{{cite book |title=The Myth of American Exceptionalism |author=Hodgson, Godfrey |year=2009 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven, CT |isbn=978-0-300-12570-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/mythofamericanex0000hodg|url-access=registration }}

In 2008, media historian Eric Alterman argued that barely 20% of Americans are willing to accept the word liberal as a political label but that supermajorities of Americans favor liberal positions time and again. Alterman observes that resistance to the label liberal is not surprising due to billions of dollars poured into the denigration of the term. A 2004 poll conducted by the National Election Study found that 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 found that 19% identified as liberal and 36% as conservative. In 2005, self-identifying moderates polled by Louis Harris & Associates were found to share essentially the same political beliefs as self-identifying liberals but rejected the word liberal because of the vilification heaped on the word itself by conservatives. Alterman acknowledges political scientist Drew Westen's observation that for most Americans the word liberal now carries meanings such as "elite", "tax and spend", and "out of touch".

Critics argue that despite its focus on social justice, modern liberalism has not effectively addressed economic inequality. They believe that policies such as tax cuts and deregulation often benefit the wealthy more than the average citizen, exacerbating the wealth gap. Some critics feel that modern liberalism advocates for excessive government intervention in the economy and individual lives, which they argue stifles personal freedom and economic growth. Critics also point out that liberal policies promoting globalization can lead to job losses in certain sectors, adversely affecting low-income workers. Liberalism is often criticized for perpetuating class divisions, as the free-market system it advocates can create winners and losers, leading to a widening gap between the rich and the poor. From a Marxist perspective, modern liberalism is seen as ignoring the realities of unequal class power and perpetuating capitalist structures that benefit the bourgeoisie at the expense of the working class. There is criticism that modern liberalism places too much emphasis on progressive social policies, which some believe can lead to cultural divisions and undermine traditional values. While modern liberalism supports social safety nets, critics question the effectiveness and sustainability of these programs, arguing that they can create dependency rather than empower individuals.{{cite web | url=https://polsci.institute/understanding-political-theory/limitations-of-liberalism-criticisms-challenges/ | title=The Limitations of Liberalism: Criticisms and Challenges | publisher=PolSci Institute | date=1 February 2024}}

• American Left
• Conservatism in the United States
• Economic interventionism
• List of American liberals
• Progressive talk radio
• Progressivism in the United States
• Socialism in the United States
• Social liberalism

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• Abrams, Richard M. America Transformed: Sixty Years of Revolutionary Change, 1941–2001 (2006)
• Alterman, Eric, and Kevin Mattson. The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama (2012) biographical approach to general survey [https://www.amazon.com/The-Cause-American-Liberalism-Roosevelt/dp/0670023434/ excerpt and text search]
• Baer, Kenneth S., Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton (UP of Kansas, 2000) 361 pp
• Battista, Andrew. The Revival of Labor Liberalism (2008) 268 pp. {{ISBN|978-0-252-03232-5}}
• Bell, Jonathan and Timothy Stanley, eds. Making Sense of American Liberalism (2012) 272pp excerpt and text search, 10 historical essays by experts
• 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.
• Conn, Steven, ed. To Promote the General Welfare: The Case for Big Government (Oxford University Press; 2012) 233 pages;
• Cooper, John Milton The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. (1983). online; a dual biography; covers liberal politics 1900–1920.
• 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.
• Diggins, John Patrick, ed. The Liberal Persuasion: Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and the Challenge of the American Past, Princeton University Press, 1997.
• Dionne, E. J. They Only Look Dead; Why Progressives will Dominate the Next Political Era (1996)
• Feingold, Henry L. American Jewish Political Culture and the Liberal Persuasion (Syracuse UP; 2014) 384 pages; traces the history, dominance, and motivations of liberalism in the American Jewish political culture, and look at concerns about Israel and memories of the Holocaust.
• Fink, Leon. Undoing the Liberal World Order: Progressive Ideals and Political Realities Since World War II (Columbia UP, 2022) [http://cup.columbia.edu/book/undoing-the-liberal-world-order/9780231202251 online]
• Gabler, Neal. Against the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Rise of Conservatism, 1976–2009 (2022) excerpt, major scholarly biography of a leading liberal; covers the Senate years in great detail.
• Hamby, Alonzo. Liberalism and Its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush (1992), by leading historian
• Hamby, Alonzo L. "The Vital Center, the Fair Deal, and the Quest for a Liberal Political Economy." American Historical Review (1972): 653–678. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1870345 in JSTOR]
• 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 (1902–1998) was a prolific historian and commentator
• Kazin, Michael. A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (2006) [https://www.amazon.com/Godly-Hero-William-Jennings-Bryan/dp/0375411356/ excerpt]
• Kazin, Michael. What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party (2022) [https://www.amazon.com/What-Took-Win-History-Democratic/dp/0374200238/ excerpt]
• 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.
• Nevins, Paul L. The Politics of Selfishness: How John Locke's Legacy is Paralzying America. (Praeger, 2010)
• Parker, Richard. John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics (2006); biography of a leading intellectual of the 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)
• Traub, James. True Believer: Hubert Humphrey's Quest for a More Just America (2024)
• Traub, James. What Was Liberalism?: The Past, Present, and Promise of a Noble Idea (2019)
• 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 liberal historian.

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Category:Social liberalism

Modern liberalism