Political liberalism

The term "political liberalism" can refer to any of several political traditions. Notable among these are "free market liberalism" (the most common use of the term in Europe) and a broad swath of left-of-center United States politics, sometimes called "American liberalism". The term can also refer to the traditions of any of a number of Liberal Parties around the world, although some of these have only a tenuous connection to any tradition that would usually be called "liberal". These definitional questions are further discussed in the article Liberalism. European liberalism is a broad political current, that includes both free market liberals and social liberals. Both emphasize individual liberty, but social liberalism sees a more active role for the state.

Both European liberalism and American liberalism trace their roots back to thinkers such as John Locke and to the Enlightenment. Both see their tradition continuing in the American War of Independence and in some of the more moderate bourgeois elements of the French Revolution, but little by little over the centuries, the two political traditions parted ways.

The political point of view known in the United States as Libertarianism also claims the early portion of this tradition, but diverges strongly from the American liberal tradition over economic matters. See classical liberalism.

The term liberal is also used to refer to certain U.S. political philosophies, such as that of John Rawls, which are considered by some to be more distinctly social democratic. But the ideas of John Rawls influenced the political thinking in liberal parties in Europe too, even of parties that are considered free market liberal. Generally one could say that the difference between social democracy and (social) liberalism is the liberal emphasis on the individual.

A caveat is in order: as with any other political philosophy, an abstract explanation of liberalism refers to an ideal. In practice, politicians make pragmatic compromises, have personal interests, and may pander to voters, so that the ideal is never a perfect description of any one individual's politics. Further, as with any other political philosophy, liberalism in any of its forms is defined somewhat differently by its proponents and its opponents. Those who adhere precisely to a well-defined set of principles are often those who are far removed from contention for power.

Characterizing liberalism in general

The word "liberal" derives from the Latin "liber" ("free") and liberals of all stripes tend to see themselves as friends of freedom, particularly freedom from the shackles of tradition. The origins of liberalism in the Enlightenment era contrasted this philosophy to feudalism and mercantilism; later, as more radical philosophies articulated themselves in the course of the French Revolution and through the Nineteenth Century, liberalism equally defined itself against socialism and communism, although some adherents of American liberalism might overlap with socialists in embracing some or all of the ideas of social democracy.

In general, liberals favor constitutional government and some form of representative democracy. Liberals at various times have embraced both constitutional monarchy and republican government. They are generally opposed to any but the milder forms of nationalism, and generally stand in contrast to conservatives in more readily embracing multiculturalism and even cultural relativism.

Liberals generally favor freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other civil liberties, although the degree of their commitment to this is not necessarily absolute: for example, many liberals accept, or even support, limits on hate speech. Nineteenth-century liberals nearly all believed in free markets and limited government intervention in the economy; part of the contemporary European liberals tend to stay close to this tradition, and even American liberals tend to believe in a smaller role for government than would be supported by most socialists. In the U.S., the nineteenth-century liberal position is probably closer to that of contemporary U.S. libertarians than contemporary U.S. liberals.

As late as 1848 in Europe, liberalism was generally seen as a revolutionary force, and in those parts of the world where feudalism or other highly traditionalist (or merely socially rigid) societies remain, it still has revolutionary aspects. One could make a case that liberalism was a major component of the political philosophy involved in the overthrow of the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe in 1989. As of 2004 in much of the developed world, enough of the goals and values of liberalism are entrenched in governmental and societal institutions that liberalism has necessarily taken on a moderate and reformist character.

The specifics of liberal agendas vary considerably from country to country and over time, so the remainder of this article will focus on political liberalism in more specific contexts.

Political Liberalism as a philosophical position

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Liberalism in the United Kingdom

Emerging primarily from the Whigs of the nineteenth century, the Liberal Party was a major force in pre-World War I politics. Their political rivals were the Conservative (Tory) Party.

After the War, their influence was undermined by the rise of socialism in the form of Labour Party, who displaced the Liberals to become the party of progressive and reformist tendencies.

The doctrine of the party evolved a lot throughout history, matching concerns of the day. For historical details, see the article about Whiggism.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the party merged with the Social Democratic Party to become the Liberal Democrats. As a result, some commentators say that the party has, at least on a national level, moved left into social democracy. (Though members often claim that the right-left spectrum is inadequate in a post-Cold War and post-ideological Britain.)

Specifically Liberal policies that remain important to the party include support for free trade (albeit with heavy regulation) and strong civil liberties.

Notable Liberal Prime Ministers include:

Liberalism in Germany

The early high points of liberalism in Germany were the Hambacher Fest (1832) and the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states.

In the National Assembly in the Frankfurt Paulskirche (1848/1849), the bourgeios liberal factions Casino and Württemberger Hof (the latter led by Heinrich von Gagern) were the majority. They favored a constitutional monarchy, popular sovereignty, and parliamentary law.

Liberalism in the Netherlands

In Netherlands liberals fought in 1848 to gain a new parliament from King Willam II of the Netherlands. The new, liberal government was led by Johan Thorbecke. Another prominent Dutch (left-)liberal is Samuel van Houten. Dutch liberalism got divided at the end of the nineteenth century into a conservative liberal current and a radical (freethinking democratic) current.

The Netherlands has not had a government headed by a liberal since 1918, although liberals have participated in centrist coalitions. As of 2004, since 1959 the VVD has been a constant member of ruling coalitions.

Dutch liberal parties

Though between 1946 and 1966 there was only one liberal party, since 1966 As of 2004 there are two "liberal" parties in the Netherlands: the Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD) ("People's Party for Freedom and Democracy") and Democraten 66 (D66). There is also a related party among the Flemish in Belgium, Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (VLD) ("Flemish Liberals and Democrats").

Liberalism in the United States

American Liberalism through 1945

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Cold War American Liberalism

American liberalism of the Cold War era was the immediate heir to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and the slightly more distant heir to the Progressives of the early twentieth century. Defining itself against both Communism and conservatism, it resembled earlier "liberalisms" in its views on many social issues, but its economic views were not those of free-market liberalism; instead, they resembled a mild form of social democracy.

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

Support for a domestic economy based 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.
Support for 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 Keynesianism economics. By way of compromise with political groupings to their right, this often became, in practice military Keynesianism.

This resembled what in other countries was sometimes referred to as social democracy. However, unlike European social democrats, American liberals never widely endorsed nationalization of industry.

In the 1950s and '60s, both major American political parties included both liberal and non-liberal elements. The Democratic Party was a two-wing party: on the one hand, Northern and Western liberals, on the other generally non-liberal Southern white regionalists. In between were the northern urban democratic "political machines". These groups had been able to agree on the New Deal economic stimulus policies, but would slowly come apart over the issue of race. The Republican Party was divided between a largely liberal Wall Street faction and a largely conservative Main Street faction.

In the early Cold War years, the liberals generally did not see Harry S. Truman as one of their own, viewing him as a bit on the conservative side. However, both as elected officials and through organizations such as the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), liberals sided with both Truman and those farther to the right (e.g. Joe McCarthy, Richard M. Nixon) in strongly opposing communism, sometimes at the sacrifice of civil liberties.

For example, ADA co-founder and archetypal Cold War liberal Hubert H. Humphrey rose to national prominence by merging the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party into the Democratic Party (1944), thereby purging it of communist influence, and even while making his name as a prominent advocate for Civil Rights, 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 turned against McCarthyism relatively early, and were central to McCarthy's downfall.

The liberal consensus

In the early 1960s, this breed of liberalism became the dominant strain of U.S. politics, perhaps peaking with the 1964 landslide victory of Lyndon B. Johnson over Barry Goldwater in the presidential election. While not necessarily a liberal himself, Johnson was a New Deal Democrat and had inherited and retained the overwhelmingly liberal Kennedy cabinet. The "guns and butter" politics of the Kennedy-Johnson years, in many respects maintained even by the later Republican administration of Richard M. Nixon, became known as the "liberal consensus."

Liberals and Civil Rights

Cold War liberalism emerged at a time when most African Americans, especially in the South, were politically and economically disenfranchised. The prominent liberal leaders were overwhelmingly white men. However, liberals increasingly embraced and even became identified with the Civil Rights Movement, culminating in the successful passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other similar legislation.

However, the relationship between white liberals and the Civil Rights movement was often strained, with Civil Rights leaders often wanting to move forward more rapidly than liberal government officials. Although President Kennedy sent federal troops to force the University of Mississippi to admit African American James Meredith in 1962, and Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. toned down the March on Washington (1963) at Kennedy's behest, by the failure to seat the delegates of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic Convention indicated the growing rift, which would only become worse with the emergence of the Black Power movement.

Consequently, the Civil Rights movement first threw a wedge between liberals and Southern Democrats (when the liberals supported it), then between white liberals and African Americans (when few white liberals were ready to support its later manifestations).

Liberals and Vietnam

Where the Civil Rights movement ultimately isolated liberals from 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 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.

To begin with, Vietnam was a "liberal" war, part of the strategy of containment of Soviet Communism. In the 1960 presidential campaign, the liberal Kennedy was more hawkish on Southeast Asia than the more conservative Nixon. Although it can be argued that the war expanded only under the less liberal Johnson, there was enormous continuity of their cabinets.

As opposition to the war grew in the U.S., a large portion of that opposition came from within liberal ranks. In 1968, the Dump Johnson movement forced Democratic President Johnson out of the race for his own party's nomination for the presidency. Assassination removed Robert Kennedy from contention and Vice President Hubert Humphrey emerged from the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention with the presidential nomination of a deeply divided party. The party's right wing had seceded to run Alabama governor George Wallace, and some on the left chose to sit out the election rather than vote for a man so closely associated with the Johnson administration. The result was a narrow victory for Republican Richard Nixon, a man who had, over the past twenty years, usually been seen as the liberals' nemesis.

Nixon and the liberal consensus

While the differences between Nixon and the liberals are obvious - the liberal wing of his own party favored politicians like Nelson Rockefeller or William Scranton, Nixon overtly placed an emphasis on "law and order" over civil liberties, and Nixon's Enemies List was composed largely of liberals - in some ways the continuity of many of Nixon's policies with those of the Kennedy-Johnson years is more remarkable than the differences. Pointing at this continuity, Noam Chomsky has called Nixon, "in many respects the last liberal president." [1]

Although liberals turned increasingly against the Vietnam War, to the point of running the very dove-ish George McGovern for president in 1972, the war had, as noted above, been of largely liberal origin. Similarly, while liberals tended to condemn actions such as the Nixon administrations support for the 1973 Chilean coup, it was not entirely dissimilar to the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 or the marine landing in the Dominican Republic in 1965.

The political dominance of the liberal consensus even into the Nixon years can best be seen in policies such as the 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. Even 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.

In addition, Nixon's normalization of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and his policy of detente with the Soviet Union were probably more popular with liberals than with his conservative base.

End of the liberal consensus

Nonetheless, during the Nixon years (and through the 1970s), the liberal consensus was coming apart. The alliance with white Southern Democrats had been lost in the Civil Rights era. While the steady enfranchisement of African Americans would expand the electorate to include many new voters sympathetic to liberal views, it would not be quite enough to make up for this. A tide of conservatism was rising in response to perceived failures of liberal policies. Organized labor. long a bulwark of the liberal consensus, was past the peak of its power and many unions had remained in favor of the Vietnam War even as liberal politicians increasingly turned against it. Within the Democratic party leadership, there was a turn to the right after the disastrous defeat of arch-liberal George McGovern in 1972.

Another factor in the decline of the liberal consensus was the rise of identity politics. Liberalism was not necessarily incompatible with feminism or various ethnic empowerment movements, but they resulted in a critique of the liberal left as "pale, male, and stale," to borrow a phrase from a slightly later time.

Meanwhile, in the Republican ranks, a wing of the party was emerging well to Nixon's right. The Goldwater Republicans became the Reagan Republicans. In 1980, conservative Republican Ronald Reagan captured his party's nomination for the presidency. His administration would establish a conservative hegemony that has proven every bit as durable as the earlier liberal consensus. By the end of the Twentieth Century, "liberal Republican" would seem almost oxymoronic, and centrist groups such as the Democratic Leadership Council would be contending on an equal footing with liberals for control of the Democratic party.

Notable Cold War Liberals

Notable exponents of various strands among Cold War Liberalism include:

Hubert H. Humphrey
John F. Kennedy and, perhaps more notably, the cabinets of the Kennedy-Johnson era.
Robert Kennedy
Edward "Teddy" Kennedy
Allard K. Lowenstein
Eugene McCarthy
George McGovern
Nelson Rockefeller

Some positions associated with contemporary American liberalism

As of 2004, in recent years the term "liberalism" in the United States has become somewhat confused, applied to a broad spectrum of viewpoints. As the United States Democratic Party, generally seen as the standard-bearer of American liberalism, adopted the more centrist outlook of the Democratic Leadership Council, the term "liberal" (applied to the party as a whole) became associated with more centrist candidates and issues who, for example, support the death penalty or take pro-business positions. For this reason, and because many on the farther right have so heavily used "liberal" as a pejorative, many Americans on the left of the political spectrum prefer to use the term progressive to describe their views, disassociating themselves from what they see as an increasingly conservative politics under the name of liberalism.

Some Americans define liberals as those who support the use of government power to promote equality, but generally not to promote order. American liberals also are more likely to openly support the legitimacy of government social intervention than are conservatives.

The following views could be considered typical of American liberalism today:

Support for government social programs such as welfare, medical care, unemployment benefits, and retirement programs.
Support for trade unions and strong regulation of business.
Support for the rights of women and minorities, particularly racial and religious minorities, the disabled, and homosexuals. Some further support such programs as affirmative action and multi-lingual education.
Support for strong environmental regulations.
Support for public transit.
Support for government funding to alternative energy research.
Opposition to the death penalty.
Support for abortion rights.
Support for animal rights.
Support for gun control.

Contemporary use of the term as a pejorative

In recent decades the most common use of the term liberal in the United States has been greatly at variance from the use of the term in the rest of the world, and with the historical meaning of the word in the USA through the mid 20th century.

The term is sometimes used as derogatory or politically undermining label. It can imply an overly free-spirited, unaccountable, and compromised character (a libertine), or someone in favor of vast and needless government intrusion into peoples lives (see Big government).

American conservatives in recent years, often those of the Republican Party, sometimes use liberal as a subversive adjective for anyone who is a member of or supports any policy of the Democratic Party.

Some think that conservatives have been successful in undermining progressives as "liberals", by deliberate public relations campaigns, through repeated use of the word in ways that associate it with irresponsibility. (See, for example, Limousine liberal; another commonly-used phrase is tax-and-spend liberal.)

Some independent leftists and libertarians who dislike the USA's two leading parties allege that since liberal means being in favor of liberty, both parties are (ironically) telling the truth when they deny that they are liberals.

List of Liberals

See List of liberals

Prominent Liberals

The following is a partial list of individuals strongly associated with the liberal tradition and instrumental in the exposition of political liberalism as a philosophy, in approximately chronological order. It is intended to be suggestive rather than exhaustive.

External links and references

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Liberalism, Gerald F. Gaus a comprehensive description of liberalism