History
The origins of American liberalism lie in the political ideals of The Enlightenment. The Constitution of the United States of 1787 set up the first modern republic, with sovereignty in the people (not in a monarch) and no hereditary ruling aristocracy. However, the Constitution limited liberty by accepting slavery. The Founding Fathers recognized the contradiction, and most expected slavery to wither away. Indeed it was abolished in all the Northern states by 1804, but due to the demand for raw cotton by the Industrial Revolution, plantation slavery continued to flourish in the Deep South.
From the time of the Revolution to the present day, America has extended liberty to ever broader classes of people. The states abolished restrictions on voting in the early 19th century. The Constitution was amended in 1865 to abolish slavery, in 1870 to extend the vote to Black men, in 1920 to extend the vote to women, and in 1971 to lower the voting age to 18. The Jim Crow system of the South between the 1890s and 1960s relegated blacks to second class citizenship, until it was overthrown by the Civil Rights Movement and new federal laws in 1964 and 1965.
Thomas Jefferson believed that America should remain a nation of small farmers. As America became more and more a nation of businessmen, liberals began to fear threats to liberty from corruption and monopolies (called "trusts" at the time). Wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few—especially in the new fast-growing cities—raised questions whether political democracy could survive the power of the rich.
The dominance of the Republican Party for most of the era 1860-1932, the Third Party System, and the Fourth Party System, prevented any major reversal of the concentration of wealth. During the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, laws were passed restricting monopolies (the antitrust movement) and regulating railroad rates.
After 1933, modern liberals used the New Deal to provide jobs during the Great Depression. The Social Security act of 1935 provided retirement and disability income for Americans unable to work or unable to find jobs. In the Social Security Act of 1965, this was extended to provide benefits for Americans unable to work due to illness.
In the 1960s, liberals fought for the rights of blacks and women, and for protection of the environment. They split on the issue of the Vietnam War.
A reaction against modern American liberalism began with Barry Goldwater, which led to the eventual election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The intellectual foundations of this conservative resurgence included the works of free-market economists Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, who argued against central economic planning (with the notable exception of the Federal Reserve), regulation of business, and Keynesian economics. Deregulation began in the mid-1970s and had broad support from both liberals and conservatives. Reagan successfully lowered marginal tax rates, most notably for those at the top of the income distribution, while his Social Security reforms raised taxes on the middle and bottom of the income distribution, leaving their total tax burden unchanged. Democratic president Bill Clinton (1993–2001) worked with conservatives, against strong liberal opposition, to end some of the main welfare programs and to implement NAFTA, linking the economies of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Clinton pushed to extend modern liberal ideals especially in the areas of health care (where he failed) and environmental protection (where he had more success).
According to Louis Hartz, liberalism was the only significant political tradition in the United States. However in the 1970s, Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood and J. G. A. Pocock saw republicanism as the main political tradition. In the 1980s, J. David Green returned to Hartz's thesis, but saw two different types of liberalism in the tradition, which he called humanist and reform. More recently, writers have seen a multitude of traditions, including liberalism, republicanism and Protestantism.
Read more about this topic: Liberalism In The United States
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)