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Why History Matters to Liberalism
If the Tea Party is to be believed, radical individualism has defined American history. But their story is wrong, and progressives must say so.
But if the Founders were not perfect, they were bold and visionary, prepared to think and act anew at a time when much of the world was skeptical about the possibility of republican government and self-rule. Our task is to follow their example, not to engage in an inevitably futile effort to parse every word they wrote and spoke to discover how we should act now. The Founders hugely valued individual freedom, but they were steeped in principles that saw the preservation of freedom as a common enterprise.
And if progressives should challenge the conservative interpretation of our founding moment, so too should they challenge the right’s claims that government played a minimal role in the growth and development of our nation. The Founders, after all, didn’t create a strong federal government for it to do nothing. And those who would claim that the federal government did not become a major actor in American life until the Progressive Era and the New Deal are willfully reading Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln out of the first eight decades after the Constitution’s ratification. Hamilton envisioned a national government that would be “intermingled in the normal exercise of government” and be engaged in “matters of internal concern.” Clay advocated for what he called the “American System,” so-named to distinguish it from the British laissez-faire system. He famously fought for federal support for “internal improvements,” the roads and canals that would bind the nation together and foster commerce among the states. (Today’s advocates of public works might usefully note that “internal improvements” is a lovelier phrase than the word “infrastructure.”)
Both Hamilton and Clay foresaw a manufacturing future for our nation, with the federal government playing an important role in its development. Hamilton noted that “in a community situated like that of the United States, the public purse must supply the deficiency of private resource.” For his part, Clay disdained those who saw the Constitution as blocking his efforts to protect American manufacturing. “This constitution must be a singular instrument!” Clay declared derisively. “It seems to be made for any other people than our own.”
And of course Lincoln did more than anyone to bind the states together into a nation while also insisting that the Declaration of Independence’s words “all men are created equal” commanded Americans to end the scourge of slavery. At first, he sought to do so gradually—Lincoln was a moderate. But eventually—moved by the exigencies of war and his own evolving views, documented powerfully by the historian Eric Foner—he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. And as a loyal follower of Clay, Lincoln continued to use the federal government on behalf of national development, signing the Morrill Act to create land-grant colleges and establishing a National Academy of Sciences.
This long history of federal activism was broken by the Gilded Age after the Civil War, the one period in our history when radical individualism predominated over tempered American individualism, which always understood that the preservation of individual freedom is, in the end, a communal project. Members of the Tea Party look to a 35-year exception to a 235-year history as the model for our entire national story. Seen this way, the Populists, Progressives, and, eventually, the New Dealers who overthrew the Gilded Age were not radicals breaking with the American past—though they were, indeed, innovative. Rather, they combined innovation with restoration. They were calling Americans back to the tradition of Hamilton, Clay, and Lincoln while also putting these ideas to the service of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian aspirations to greater equality and expanded democracy. Thus did they propose to use, in a formulation made famous by Progressive Era writer Herbert Croly, Hamiltonian means to Jeffersonian ends.
The Long Consensus now under threat from a conservatism that champions a radical form of individualism is not some European import, a radical scheme aimed at undermining traditional American liberties. On the contrary, it is as deeply and profoundly American as Hamilton and Clay, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and both Roosevelts.
The classic American balance was well described by FDR in his speech before the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco that was the most philosophical address of his 1932 campaign. If “we must restrict the operations of the speculator, the manipulator, even the financier,” Roosevelt declared, “I believe we must accept the restriction as needful, not to hamper individualism but to protect it [emphasis added].” Government’s responsibility, Roosevelt said, “is the maintenance of a balance, within which every individual may have a place if he will take it; in which every individual may find safety if he wishes it; in which every individual may attain such power as his ability permits, consistent with his assuming the accompanying responsibility.”
That balance is what is at stake now.
Obama Discovers History
I confess that no one outside the Osawatomie Chamber of Commerce was as happy as I was last December when Obama chose to make the case for his own approach to governance by going to the Kansas town where Teddy Roosevelt delivered his 1910 New Nationalism speech. Having spent the previous two years working on a book about the progressive idea in American history, I couldn’t help but be cheered by the President’s eagerness to link himself to TR and the longer American story.
It was not the first time Obama had appealed to history. Ventura’s essay in Democracy had, in part, been inspired by a 2005 commencement address by Obama at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, in which he assailed “Social Darwinism” for “ignoring our history” and “our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we are all in it together and everybody’s got a shot at opportunity.”
Interesting. I can't help notice that you don't mention HD Croly, author of "The Promise of American Life". Published in 1909 it was said to be the goad that galvanised T Roosevelt to progressive reform. That TR's 1910 speech followed Croly's book was no accident.
His analysis is similar to yours, but significantly different and, I think, more correct. Its not just that there has been a tension between individual liberty and collective purpose, but that it grossly misconstrued power, risk and intent, and so was inadvertently engineered to fail. In many ways, I think, he predicted our current predicament better than any other commentator I've read.
It would be unfortunate if his unique contribution were forgotten and ignored altogether just when its relevance is most apt.
Jun 12, 2012, 4:55 PMIn fact, Croly is mentioned on page 3 of this essay. It's indeed relevant.
Jun 13, 2012, 12:33 PMOne reason liberals have trouble embracing history in the way that you suggest is that opposition to American greatness -- which you ascribe to liberal policy -- has been at the center of their ideology. Another is that the successive liberal love affairs with Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism in turn have proved so disastrously in error that a reminder of this past can be nothing except damning. Finally, the Long Consensus, as you term it -- the strengthening of central government at the expense of individualism -- was forged as a response to the Great Depression. However, its singular failure to prevent its recurrence in the current Great Recession, is hardly an endorsement of liberal historical credentials.
American liberal and conservative traditions, as we currently understand the terms, have their roots in the disparate religious cultures that were part of the American foundation and rise to prominence. The judeo-catholic, communitarian, altruistic, guilt-driven ethic has always stood in opposition to the protestant, individualist, self-reliant, pragmatic one. The key reason for the conservative narrative's ascendance is the decline of the traditionally communicatian media establishment's monopoly on communication. Because all now can speak and be equally-well heard, polarization can only continue no matter how hard the factions try to rewrite history in their own favor.
http://mythdesisyphus.wordpress.com/
Jun 19, 2012, 2:03 PMOne reason liberals have trouble embracing history in the way that you suggest is that opposition to American greatness -- which you ascribe to liberal policy -- has been at the center of their ideology. Another is that the successive liberal love affairs with Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism in turn have proved so disastrously in error that a reminder of this past can be nothing except damning. Finally, the Long Consensus, as you term it -- the strengthening of central government at the expense of individualism -- was forged as a response to the Great Depression. However, its singular failure to prevent its recurrence in the current Great Recession, is hardly an endorsement of liberal historical credentials.
American liberal and conservative traditions, as we currently understand the terms, have their roots in the disparate religious cultures that were part of the American foundation and rise to prominence. The judeo-catholic, communitarian, altruistic, guilt-driven ethic has always stood in opposition to the protestant, individualist, self-reliant, pragmatic one. The key reason for the conservative narrative's ascendance is the decline of the traditionally communicatian media establishment's monopoly on communication. Because all now can speak and be equally-well heard, polarization can only continue no matter how hard the factions try to rewrite history in their own favor.
http://mythdesisyphus.wordpress.com/
Jun 19, 2012, 2:05 PM@Sisyphus:
I think you're distorting history. First of all, a tiny little bit of history would be enough to illustrate that "liberal" has not had a stable, consistent meaning, and some precision of terms is important.
This realization undermines the claims of your first paragraph: it's hard to know who you have in mind with folks left-of-center who "opposed" America's greatness, but easy to counter every example you might adduce with a lefty who loved America and wanted it big, rich and strong.
It's also ridiculous to paint everyone left-of-center with the boogyman-colored brush of Stalinism and Maoism.
To be honest, I didn't make it to your second paragraph.
Jun 19, 2012, 6:08 PM@Sisyphus:
I think you're distorting history. First of all, a tiny little bit of history would be enough to illustrate that "liberal" has not had a stable, consistent meaning, and some precision of terms is important.
This realization undermines the claims of your first paragraph: it's hard to know who you have in mind with folks left-of-center who "opposed" America's greatness, but easy to counter every example you might adduce with a lefty who loved America and wanted it big, rich and strong.
It's also ridiculous to paint everyone left-of-center with the boogyman-colored brush of Stalinism and Maoism.
To be honest, I didn't make it to your second paragraph.
Jun 19, 2012, 6:38 PMOne theme that I think really resonates across the spectrum, and deserves a lot more emphasis by liberal and progressive efforts doesn't fit neatly into Mr. Dionne's liberty vs equality framework:
Fairness.
Just about everything lefties and liberals think is important can be described in terms of fairness, from tax policy to affirmative action to environmental protection.
Taxes and fairness is pretty obvious. Here's an off-the-cuff take on the other two examples:
It's only fair that we not (intentionally or inadvertently) lock some people out of some opportunities.
It's only fair that we not saddle our great-grandchildren with the burden of our selfish and short-sighted decisions now.
And the language of fairness is a much more powerful and effective way to approach these topics than the way we often do.
It's very hard to argue for unfairness - we need to do a better job of painting defenders of selfishness, fear, and divisiveness into a rhetorical corner with carefully crafted appeals to broadly held values like fairness.
Jun 19, 2012, 7:42 PMI like where Dionne is taking us in his analysis, toward historical grounding for the social welfare state - government for the people. Yet the paradigm of individualism vs. community is not what the political battle is about. Individualism has been squeezed out by a combination of population growth, urbanization, corporate capitalism, military nationalism, and social welfare liberalism. Economically, the failure to maintain individual free enterprise can be traced to the fate of anti-trust legislation, which was pursued with some vigor from the 1870s to WWII, then relegated to reigning in only the most egregious of monopolies. The political fight is mainly between two different forms of collectivism, if one can use this word, corporate-financial-industrial capitalism and democratic-social welfare government. The fight is over decision-making power, who calls the shots. Small businesses still thrive, but they are being beaten down by the Walmarts of the world, globalization, and now internet sales, all of which have nothing to do with government regulations or taxes. There are illusions piled on top of illusions in this business. Dionne pierces through a number of them.
Jun 26, 2012, 5:20 PMPost a Comment
E.J. Dionne Jr. is the chair of the Democracy Editorial Committee and a columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. This essay is drawn from his new book, Our Divided Political Heart.
Events
Democracy, Brennan Center Co-Host Money-in-Politics Event
On May 7, the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York City-based public policy institute, hosted a panel discussion co-sponsored by Democracy and Demos on money in politics, the subject of Democracy’s centerpiece symposium in the Winter 2013 issue.
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In a March 28 post in The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, Dylan Matthews interviewed UCLA professor Mark Kleiman about his essay, “Smart on Crime,” in the current issue of Democracy.
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In his Bloomberg View column on February 13, Ezra Klein discussed the politics of military spending and highlighted a number of quotes from former Representative Barney Frank’s feature contribution to Democracy’s Winter 2013 issue.
