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.
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. 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". Recent scholars have re-evaluated the development of American liberalism in the 20th and 21st centuries, emphasizing how modern liberalism grew out of global intellectual traditions rather than solely domestic political movements.
Progressive Era The
progressive movement emerged in the 1890s and included intellectual reformers typified by sociologist
Lester Frank Ward and economist
Richard T. Ely. 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. 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.
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. In philosophy and education,
John Dewey was highly influential. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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". 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. 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.
Liberal and moderate Republicans 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. 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 unions and much of the
New Deal. However, they were intensely isolationist in foreign policy. 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, Governor
Thomas E. Dewey of New York, Governor
Earl Warren of California, 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. The most notable of them all was Governor
Nelson Rockefeller of New York. 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
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. 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. 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.
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 in 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. 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." 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. 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." 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.As noted by a 1950 journal,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.The Great Depression seemed over in 1936, but a relapse in 1937–1938 produced continued long-term unemployment. Full employment was reached with the total mobilization of the United States economic, social and military resources in World War II. At that point, the main relief programs such as the WPA and the CCC were ended. Arthur Herman argues that Roosevelt restored prosperity after 1940 by cooperating closely with big business, although when asked "Do you think the attitude of the Roosevelt administration toward business is delaying business recovery?", the American people in 1939 responded "yes" by a margin of more than 2-to-1. 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.
Relief, recovery and reform The New Deal consisted of three types of programs designed to produce relief, recovery and reform: • Relief was the immediate effort to help the one-third of the population that was hardest hit by the depression. Roosevelt expanded
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".
Race 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. Blacks were hired by the WPA as supervisors in the North. Of 10,000 WPA supervisors in the South, only 11 were black. 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. Kinker and Smith argue that "even the most prominent racial liberals in the New Deal did not dare to criticize Jim Crow". 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. 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.
Foreign policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt In international affairs Roosevelt's presidency until 1938 reflected the isolationism that dominated practically all of American politics at the time. After 1938, he moved toward interventionism as the world hurtled toward war. Liberals split on foreign policy 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.
Liberalism during the Cold War 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. Most prominent and constant among the positions of Cold War liberalism were the following: In some ways, this resembled what in other countries was referred to as
social democracy; 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 cities 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. 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. Nonetheless, liberals opposed
McCarthyism and were central to McCarthy's downfall. 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". In Congress, during the Cold War period, Democrats were generally found to have more liberal voting records than their Republican counterparts. Based on 61 key votes, a study by the
AFL-CIO Committee on Political Action of voting patterns in the House of Representatives from 1947 through 1960 gave Democrats on average a liberal score of 69.7%, compared with 23.9% for Republicans. A number of progressive laws were also approved during the course of the
Fifth Party System. Later, during the Reagan-Bush years, congressional majorities voted in favor of a number of liberal measures, while a number of progressive labor measures were also introduced on a State level, concerning such matters as sexual harassment, safeguards from employer retaliation against an employee reporting a violation of law or participating in an enforcement proceeding, equal pay, the right of employees to receive information on toxic substances, minimum wage rates, parental leave, discrimination, meal periods, and occupational safety and health.
Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal 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. The
Korean War made military spending the nation's priority. Under Truman, the number of Federal grant programmes more than doubled to 71. 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.
1950s 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." 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". 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.
Liberal coalition Politically, starting in the late 1940s there was a powerful labor–liberal coalition with strong grassroots support, energetic well-funded organizations and a cadre of supporters in Congress. On labor side was the
American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) which merged into the
AFL–CIO in 1955, the
United Auto Workers (UAW), union lobbyists and the Committee on Political Education (COPE) 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. The main liberal organizations included the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 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). Key liberal leaders in Congress included
Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota,
Paul Douglas of Illinois,
Henry Jackson of Washington,
Walter Mondale of Minnesota and
Claude Pepper of Florida in the Senate Leaders in the House included Representatives
Frank Thompson of New Jersey,
Richard Bolling of Missouri and other members of the
Democratic Study Group. 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. 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." 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.
Intellectuals Intellectuals and writers were an important component of the coalition at this point. Many writers, especially historians, became prominent spokesmen for liberalism and were frequently called upon for public lectures and for popular essays on political topics by magazines such as
The New Republic, Saturday Review, The Atlantic Monthly and
Harpers. Also active in the arena of ideas were literary critics such as
Lionel Trilling and
Alfred Kazin, economists such as
Alvin Hansen,
John Kenneth Galbraith,
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. 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. 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. Commager's biographer Neil Jumonville has argued that this style of influential public history has been lost in the 21st century because political correctness has rejected Commager's open marketplace of tough ideas. Jumonville says history now comprises abstruse deconstruction by experts, with statistics instead of stories and is now comprehensible only to the initiated while
ethnocentrism rules in place of common identity. Other experts have traced the relative decline of intellectuals to their concern race, ethnicity and gender and scholarly antiquarianism.
Great Society: 1964–1968 signing the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2, 1964 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. 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." 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. 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. 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, 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". Conservative reaction would come with the election of
Ronald Reagan in 1980. 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." 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." Liberals dominated Congress for much of the Sixties and Seventies, such as the 95th and 96th Congresses, with less than half of their members voting conservatively.
Liberals and civil rights 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. 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, 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. 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.
Neoconservatives 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. 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. 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.
Under attack from the New Left Liberalism came under attack from both the New Left in the early 1960s and the right in the late 1960s. Kazin (1998) says: "The liberals who anxiously turned back the assault of the postwar Right were confronted in the 1960s by a very different adversary: a radical movement led, in the main, by their own children, the white "New Left". This new element, says Kazin, worked to "topple the corrupted liberal order". As Maurice Isserman notes, the New Left "came to use the word 'liberal' as a political epithet". 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. 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. 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. While the New Left considered Humphrey a war criminal, Nixon attacked him as the New Left's enabler—a man with "a personal attitude of indulgence and permissiveness toward the lawless". Beinart concludes that "with the country divided against itself, contempt for Hubert Humphrey was the one thing on which left and right could agree". After 1968, the New Left lost strength and the more serious attacks on liberalism came from the right. Nevertheless, the liberal ideology lost its attractiveness. Liberal commentator
E. J. Dionne 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".
Liberals and the 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. 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.
Richard Nixon The
chaos of 1968, a bitterly divided Democratic Party and bad blood between the New Left and the liberals gave Nixon the presidency. Nixon rhetorically attacked liberals, but in practice 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. Regardless of his policies, liberals hated Nixon and rejoiced when the
Watergate scandal forced his resignation in 1974. While the differences between Nixon and the liberals are obvious – the liberal wing of his own party favored politicians such as
Nelson Rockefeller 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. 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". 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. 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.
Labor unions Labor unions were central components of liberalism, operating through the
New Deal coalition. The unions gave strong support to the Vietnam War, thereby breaking with the blacks and with the intellectual and student wings of liberalism. The legacy of slavery deeply entrenched racial divisions within the American working class, in sharp contrast to the more unified labor movements of countries without a history of racial segregation. These divisions produced a two-tiered labor force with competing priorities on issues such as taxation, social welfare, and economic equality. Racial stratification fostered resistance among white workers to policies perceived as redistributing resources along racial lines. As a result, political interests increasingly diverged by race, ultimately weakening class solidarity and impeding the development of a cohesive labor movement. 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. 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. 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. The financial crisis that hit American states during the recession of 2008–2011 focused increasing attention on pension systems for government employees, with conservatives trying to reduce the pensions.
Environmentalism A new unexpected political discourse emerged in the 1970s centered on the environment. The debates did not fall neatly into a left–right dimension, for everyone proclaimed their support for the environment. Environmentalism appealed to the well-educated middle class, but it aroused fears among lumbermen, farmers, ranchers, blue collar workers, automobile companies and oil companies whose economic interests were threatened by new regulations. As a result, conservatives tended to oppose environmentalism while liberals endorsed new measures to protect the environment. 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. 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.
End of the liberal consensus 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. 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; however, some liberals hold a minority view that there was no real shift and that Kennedy's defeat was merely by historical accident caused by his poor campaign, international crises, and Carter's use of the incumbency. Abrams (2006) argues that the eclipse of liberalism was caused by a grass-roots populist revolt, often with a
Christian 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.
Decline during Clinton administration and the Third Way 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. 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. 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. 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. 's policies adhered to 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 in the United States during the presidency of
Bill Clinton, and mirrored earlier
classical liberal market concepts more than the robust
social liberalism of presidents
Roosevelt and
Johnson. With respect to presidents, the term Third Way was introduced by political scientist
Stephen Skowronek, who wrote
The Politics presidents Make (1993, 1997; ). 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". 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. 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". Along with the Third Way think tank, the
Democratic Leadership Council are also adherents of Third Way politics. 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". Specific definitions of Third Way policies may differ between Europe and the United States.
Return of protest politics 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. The outcome was tied up in courts for a month until reaching the
Supreme Court. In the controversial ruling
Bush v. Gore case on December 9, 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. 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. 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. Polls conducted in 2006 showed an average of 37% approval ratings for Bush which contributed to what Bush called the thumping of the Republican Party in the
2006 midterm elections. 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. In part due to backlash against the Bush administration,
Barack Obama, seen by some as a liberal and progressive, 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. Led by the
Tea Party movement, the Republicans won back control of one of the two Houses of Congress in the
2010 midterm elections. 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. 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. 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. While the survey also found that 80% of the protestors self-identified as slightly to extremely liberal, 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." 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. Modern liberals also tend to support
police reform through government action, and Democratic mayors have campaigned on reforms for police misconduct including police brutality. Furthermore, modern liberals have supported affirmative action for
minority groups historically discriminated against, multilateralism and support for international institutions. 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. 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. On economic issues, modern liberals in the 21st century like their 20th century counterparts have called for greater regulation and oversight on businesses. As income inequality grows in the United States, modern liberals tend to support tax increases on the wealthy. 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. == Philosophy ==