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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
“ Liberal ” is a familiar term in contemporary American political debate. Like all political labels it is used in a variety of ways: pejoratively by liberalism's opponents, approvingly by its advocates, or simply as a descriptive term by political commentators and pollsters. The 1976 Presidential campaign offers numerous illustrations. George Wallace dismissed liberals as “ pointy heads … who couldn't ride a bicycle straight.” Georgia State Senator Julian Bond defined his position during the primaries in these terms: “ Liberal voters long tired of losing election battles may want to lay down their liberalism and convert to Carter. I'll stick to Udall.” Interestingly, Udall himself was hesitant about calling himself a “ liberal ” and attempted to dump the label, preferring “ progressive ” on the grounds that “ it seems to bounce off the people better.” The media obviously were not impressed and continued to rate him and his fellow politicians according to their “ liberal ” or “ conservative ” bias. Clearly “ liberal ” is a term we cannot do without, however great the confusions surrounding it.
1 Wallace, George, quoted in The Times (London), 28 02 1976, p. 5Google Scholar; Bond, Julian, quoted in The Guardian, 14 09 1976, p. 13Google Scholar; Udall, Morris, quoted in Newsweek, 15 03 1976, p. 32Google Scholar. For evidence of the dispute surrounding the term see Commentary 62 (09 1976). In a symposium on Liberalism and Conservatism 64 intellectuals were asked to say what they understood by these terms.
2 See for example Degler, Carl, Out of our Past (New York: Harper Colophon, 1970), pp. 145–52Google Scholar; Schlesinger, Arthur Jr, The Age of Jackson (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1946), pp. 505, 520–23Google Scholar; Potter, David, “ Civil War ” in The Comparative Approach to American History, ed. Woodward, C. Vann (New York, Basic Books, 1968), pp. 135–45Google Scholar.
3 Hartz, Louis, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955), pp. 2–14, 308–9Google Scholar.
4 These publications include Croly, Herbert, The Promise of American Life (New York: Macmillan, 1909)Google Scholar, and Progressive Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1914)Google Scholar; Lippmann, Walter, A Preface to Politics (New York: Mitchell Kennerly, 1913)Google Scholar, and Drift and Mastery (New York: Mitchell Kennedy, 1914)Google Scholar; Weyl, Walter, The New Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1912)Google Scholar. The best account of this triumvirate and of the first decade of the New Republic's life is Forcey, Charles, The Crossroads of Liberalism (New York: OUP, 1961)Google Scholar.
5 The most detailed accounts of “ liberal ” and “ liberalism ” during the twentieth century in America are contained in Beer, Samuel, “ Liberalism and the National Idea ” in Left, Right and Centre: Essays on Liberalism and Conservatism in the United States, ed. Goldwin, Robert A. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), pp. 142–67Google Scholar; and Rotunda, Ronald, “ The ‘ Liberal ’ Label: Roosevelt's Capture of a Symbol, ” Public Policy, 18 (1968), 377–408Google Scholar. Both Beer and Rotunda are primarily concerned with Roosevelt's adoption of the term “ liberal ” and while they note its appearance in the New Republic consider this of marginal importance.
6 Price, Richard, “ On the Importance of the American Revolution …, ” in Kraus, Michael, The North Atlantic Civilization (New York: Van Nostrand, 1957), p. 126Google Scholar; Hamilton, Alexander, “ Report on the Public Credit ” in Hofstadter, Richard, ed., Great Issues In American History, 2 vols. (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), 2, 146Google Scholar; John Quincy Adams, quoted in Seward, W. H., Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1971, facsimile of first edition, Auburn, 1849), p. 220Google Scholar.
7 Rotunda, p. 378.
8 An excellent recent account of the origins of the British Liberal Party is Vincent, John, The Formation of the British Liberal Party, 1857–68 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972)Google Scholar.
9 Gladstone quoted in Shannon, Richard, The Crisis of Imperialism 1865–1915 (St. Albans: Paladin, 1976), p. 181Google Scholar. For Hobhouse's “ new liberalism ” see his Liberalism, Introduction by A. P. Grimes (1911; rpt. New York: OUP, 1964).
10 Quoted in Bowen, C. D., Yankee from Olympus (Boston: Little Brown, 1944), p. 91Google Scholar.
11 Rotunda, p. 382.
12 Franklin Roosevelt did toy with the idea, first proposed to him by Wendell Wilkie during the 1944 election campaign, of forming a “ really American liberal party ” which would unite liberal Democrats and Republicans. When this secret plan threatened to become public, Roosevelt abandoned it, fearing that the news might harm his chances in the election. See Bishop, Jim, FDR's Last Year (New York: William Morrow, 1974), pp. 88–89, 129–30Google Scholar.
13 A good account of the liberal reformers of this period is Sproat, John, “ The Best men ”: Liberal Reformers of the Gilded Age (New York: OUP, 1968)Google Scholar.
14 Croly, , Progressive Democracy, p. 2Google Scholar.
15 For the suggestion that the New Republic liberals were influenced in their choice of “ liberal ” by the pre-war Liberal Governments in Britain see Beer, p. 147.
16 Theodore Roosevelt, standing as a Progressive in 1912, gained over four million votes in the Presidential contest — enough to split the Republican Party and allow Wilson to win by a narrow margin. In the 1914 elections the Progressive Party lost heavily in states where it had made a good showing in 1912, and by 1916 the party was little more than an empty shell. Roosevelt had meanwhile turned his attention to military preparedness, and without a national leader the party's fate was sealed. In 1916 the battle for progressivism was to be fought largely within the major parties.
17 Herbert Croly, in particular, had little time for the Democratic Party's tradition of individualism, states' rights and limited government. See his The Promise of American Life, passim.
18 “ A Luncheon and a Moral,” New Republic, 18 04 1916, p. 251Google Scholar.
19 Editorial, ibid., 24 June 1916, p. 181.
22 “ Woodrow Wilson,” ibid., 24 June 1916, p. 186.
23 “ Hughes or Wilson,” ibid., 28 Oct. 1916, p. 312.
24 “ The Two Parties in 1916,” ibid., 21 Oct. 1916, p. 290.
25 “ The Case for Wilson,” ibid., 14 Oct. 1916, p. 263.
26 See for example the New Republic's statement: “ The government itself has become the necessary agent of the democratic programme because the programme itself has become essentially social. The American democracy will not continue to need the two-party system to intermediate between the popular will and the governmental machinery.” “ The Future of the Two-Party System,” ibid., 14 November 1914, p. 11.
27 Arthur Link gives a vivid account of the upsurge of partisan rivalry over the summer of 1916 in Wilson (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965), Vol. 5, Ch. IVGoogle Scholar.
28 Editorial, New Republic, 7 11 1914, p. 10Google Scholar and Editorial, ibid., 9 Jan. 1915, p. 3.
30 “ War at Any Price,” ibid., 27 Nov. 1915, p. 85.
31 “ An Appeal to the President,” ibid., 22 Apr. 1916, p. 304.
32 It is hard to see how Germany could have accepted such a proposal. As it was, the United States was already giving substantial aid to the Allies in the form of loans, and the demand to evacuate and indemnify Belgium might merely have exacerbated German-American relations without materially changing them. On the other hand, severance of diplomatic relations might have led directly to war. The strategic and psychological importance to Germany of holding Belgium is well described in Fischer, Fritz, Germany's Aims in The First World War (London: Chatto and Windus, 1967), Ch. 9Google Scholar.
33 “ Mr. Wilson's Great Utterance,” New Republic, 3 06 1916, p. 103Google Scholar; “ America to Europe, August 1916,” ibid., 29 July 1916, p. 321; “ Germany and the League of Peace,” ibid., 18 Nov. 1916, p. 61.
34 Editorial, ibid., 2 Dec. 1916, p. 106.
35 “ The Note as Americanism,” ibid., 30 Dec. 1916, p. 229.
36 “ Beneath the Outcry,” ibid., 23 Dec. 1916, p. 232. The complicated story of the negotiations between Germany and America, and the background to them, is told in Arthur Link, Wilson, Vol. 5, Ch. 5; Devlin, Patrick, Too Proud to Fight (London: OUP, 1974), Chs. 17–19Google Scholar; and Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War, Ch. 9.
37 Editorial, New Republic, 10 03 1917, p. 148Google Scholar and “ The Great Decision,” ibid., 7 Apr. 1917, p. 280.
38 “ War and Revolution,” ibid., 24 Mar. 1917, p. 212.
39 The Allies, like Germany, were suspicious of interference by Wilson, but more conciliatory in their response. Germany reacted first to Wilson's mediation with an evasive reply which amounted to a rejection. As the New Republic put it “ The Central Powers answered curtly, and immediately lost whatever psychological advantage they had gained by the Chancellor's offer of peace.” By contrast, “ the nine Allies by their reply won a great advantage. They specifically put the organisation of security first, made territorial claims contingent upon it, and proposed a formula ambiguous enough to permit of wide negotiations.” Ibid., 27 Jan. 1917, p. 341.
40 “ Who Willed American Participation? ” 14 Apr. 1917, pp. 308–9.
41 Croly, , The Promise of American Life, p. 312Google Scholar.
42 Ibid., p. 298.
43 “ In Defence of the Atlantic World,” New Republic, 17 02 1917, p. 69Google Scholar. Twenty-four years later Walter Lippmann put his name to this article. In U.S. Foreign Policy (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1943), pp. 21–22Google Scholar, he quoted a large section from it to show that in 1917 at least one American recognized that America was going to war for something more substantial than the mere defence of legal rights.
44 See, for example, “ Preparedness — For What? ” New Republic, 26 06 1915, 188–90Google Scholar.
45 “ A War Program for Liberals,” ibid., 31 Mar. 1917, pp. 249–50.
46 Croly, , The Promise of American Life, pp. 443–44Google Scholar.
47 Quoted in Schissel, Lillian, ed., The World of Randolph Bourne (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1965), p. xxviGoogle Scholar.
48 Richard Hofstadter suggests that William James was the first to use the term in America. (It had originally come into use, he points out, in France during the Dreyfus affair.) He observes that “ at least from the Progressive Era onward, the political commitment of the majority of the intellectual leadership in the United States has been to causes that might be variously described as liberal (in the American sense of the term), progressive, or radical.” Anti-lntellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), p. 39Google Scholar. Christopher Lasch made this link a main theme of his The New Radicalism in America, 1899–1963 (New York: OUP, 1965)Google Scholar, arguing that “ modern radicalism or liberalism can best be understood as a phase of the social history of intellectuals.… The rise of the new radicalism coincided with the emergence of the intellectual as a distinct social type ” (p. ix). See also Bourke, Paul, “ Social Critics and the End of American Innocence, 1907–1921,” Journal of American Studies 3 (1969), 57–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Laski, Harold, The Rise of European Liberalism (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1936), p. 100Google Scholar.
50 In Kraus, Michael, The North Atlantic Civilization, p. 127Google Scholar.
51 Paine, Tom, Common Sense, in Hofstadter, , ed., Great Issues in American History, 2, 262Google Scholar.
