Liberalism in the United States
Liberalism in the United States is based on concepts of unalienable rights of the individual. The fundamental liberal ideals of consent of the governed, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the separation of church and state, the right to bear arms, the right to due process, and equality before the law are widely accepted as a common foundation of liberalism. It differs from liberalism worldwide because the United States never had a resident hereditary aristocracy, and avoided much of the class warfare that characterized Europe. According to American philosopher Ian Adams, "all US parties are liberal and always have been", they generally promote classical liberalism, which is "a form of democratized Whig constitutionalism plus the free market", and the "point of difference comes with the influence of social liberalism" and principled disagreements about the proper role of government.
Since the 1930s, liberalism is usually used without a qualifier in the United States to refer to modern liberalism, a variety of liberalism that accepts a government role to prevent market failures and promotes expansion of civil and political rights, with the common good considered as compatible with or superior to the absolute freedom of the individual. This political philosophy was exemplified by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies and later Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society. Other accomplishments include the Works Progress Administration and the Social Security Act in 1935, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This variety of liberalism is also known as modern liberalism to distinguish it from classical liberalism, from which it sprang out along with modern American conservatism.
Modern American liberalism includes issues such as same-sex marriage, transgender rights, the abolition of capital punishment, reproductive rights and other women's rights, voting rights for all adult citizens, civil rights, environmental justice, and government protection of the right to an adequate standard of living. National social services, such as equal educational opportunities, access to health care, and transportation infrastructure are intended to meet the responsibility to promote the general welfare of all citizens as established by the United States Constitution. Some liberals, who call themselves classical liberals, fiscal conservatives, or libertarians, endorse fundamental liberal ideals but diverge from modern liberal thought on the grounds that economic freedom is more important than social equality.
History
18th and 19th century
The origins of American liberalism are in the political ideals of the Age of Enlightenment. The Constitution of the United States of 1787 established the first modern republic, with sovereignty in the people and no hereditary ruling aristocracy; however, the Constitution limited liberty, in particular by accepting slavery. The Founding Fathers recognized the contradiction but believed they needed a nation unified enough to survive in the world. During the late 18th and 19th centuries, the United States extended liberty to ever broader classes of people. The states abolished many restrictions on voting for white males during the early 19th century. The Constitution was amended in 1865 to abolish slavery and in 1870 to extend the vote to black men.Progressive Era
As the United States economy began shifting to manufacturing and services during the 19th century, liberals started to consider corruption and concentrations of economic power as threats to liberty. During the Progressive Era beginning in the late 19th century, laws were passed restricting monopolies and regulating railroad rates.20th century
According to James Reichley, liberalism took on its current meaning in the United States during the 1920s. In the 19th century and the early 20th century, the term had usually described classical liberalism, which emphasizes limited government, religious freedom, and support for the free market. The term "progressivism" had been used to describe individuals like Theodore Roosevelt, who favored a limited amount of government activism. During the 1920s, the term progressive became associated with politicians such as Robert M. La Follette, who called for government ownership of railroads and utilities in his 1924 third-party presidential bid. Progressivism thus gained an association with radicalism that advocates of more moderate reforms sought to avoid. The term was also unattractive to certain groups because of its longstanding association with the Republican Party and the Social Gospel movement. In 1920, the franchise was extended to women with another Amendment. In the late 1920s and 1930s, political figures such as Franklin D. Roosevelt increasingly adopted the term liberal to describe an individual who favored some government activism but was opposed to more radical reforms.New Deal
In the 1930s, liberalism came to describe a pragmatic ideology that called for a moderate amount of government regulation of the economy, progressive taxation, and increased exercise of federal government power in relation to the states. It also came to signify support for organized labor and a degree of hostility, or at least suspicion, of big business. Liberalism did retain some aspects of the term's usage prior to the 1930s, including support for civil liberties and secularism. What was once called classical liberalism came to be described as libertarianism, or a combination of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. These positions were contrasted with those to their political left, who favored greater changes, and with conservatives, who opposed these changes.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 want and unemployment, provide greater opportunities and restore prosperity. The presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the longest in United States history, was marked by an increased role the federal government had in addressing the nation's economic and other problems. Work relief programs provided jobs, ambitious projects such as the Tennessee Valley Authority promoted economic development and a social-security system laid the groundwork for the nation's modern welfare system. The Great Depression dragged on through the 1930s despite the New Deal programs, which were met with mixed success in solving the nation's economic problems.
Religious and ethnic minorities had been hard hit and were helped by the relief programs and the patronage policy. Catholics and Jews gave strong support to the New Deal coalition. Blacks were included in New Deal programs, especially in the North, with a lesser role in the South. Sociologist Gunnar Myrdal concluded:
The Negro's share may be meagre in all this state activity, but he has been given a share. He has been given a broader and more variegated front to defend and from which to push forward. This is the great import of the New Deal to the Negro. For almost the first time in history of the nation the state has done something substantial and a social way without excluding the Negro.
The New Deal provided direct relief for minorities in the 1930s through the Civilian Conservation Corps, Public Works Administration, the Works Progress Administration and other agencies and during World War II executive orders and the Fair Employment Practices Commission opened millions of new jobs to minorities and forbade discrimination in companies with government contracts. The 1.5 million black veterans in 1945 were fully entitled to generous veteran benefits from the GI Bill on the same basis as everyone else.
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 Emergency Relief and Construction program and added the CCC, the PWA and the WPA, the latter replacing in 1935 the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Also in 1935, the Social Security Act and unemployment insurance programs were added. The Social Security Act provided retirement and disability income for Americans unable to work or unable to find jobs. Separate programs were set up for relief in rural areas such as the Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration. Recovery programs sought to restore the economy to pre-depression levels. It involved deficit spending, dropping the gold standard, efforts to re-inflate farm prices that were too low and efforts to increase foreign trade. New Deal efforts to help the United States recuperate were in part through a much expanded Hoover program, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.
Reform was based on the assumption that the depression was caused by the inherent market instability and that government intervention was necessary to rationalize and stabilize the economy and to balance the interests of farmers, business and labor. Reform measures included the National Industrial Recovery Act, regulation of Wall Street by the Securities Exchange Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act for farm programs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insurance for bank deposits enacted through the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 and the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, dealing with labor-management relations. Despite some New Dealers's urgings, there was no major antitrust program. Roosevelt opposed socialism and only one major program, the Tennessee Valley Authority, involved government ownership of the means of production.