Fade the Butcher
04-05-2006, 01:52 PM
"In time, these socio-political developments might have caused the liberal tradition of the 1920s and 1930s to decompose or to be gradually transmuted into another liberalism more expressive of the aspirations of those who constituted its social base. But a series of events, beginning with the rise of Nazism, continuing with World War II, and concluding with the Cold War, ensured that the transformation of liberalism would be swift and deeply unsettling. That transformation entailed yet another reconfiguration of the liberal tradition.
Hitler's rise to power in one of the world's most technologically and culturally advanced societies directly challenged two convictions that had sustained American liberalism since the early 1920s: first, that the taming of capitalism was the preeminent problem confronting industrial societies and, second, that issues of racial and ethnic discrimination were best left alone or addressed indirectly, through programs of economic reform. The terrifying popularity of Nazi racist doctrines forced American liberals to reconsider their "hands-off" approach to problems of religious bigotry and racial hatred. These problems were not "secondary"; they were themselves primary. Racism and prejudice had to become subjects of political commentary and targets of social action.
This confrontation with Nazism induced a shift in liberal sensibilities that was, in the 1930s, subtle but would, in the 1940s, achieve seismic proportions. This magnitude of this shift can be discerned in the outpouring of books on racial problems and religious prejudice during the 1940s. Causes that had languished on the liberal agenda -- civil rights, Zionism, immigration reform -- were now embraced. Reinhold Niebuhr, the Protestant theologian who would have a large influence on post-World War II liberalism, excoriated his fellow liberals in 1942 for thinking that the distribution of property was a more fundamental cause of social division and conflict than were racial and ethnic differences. Gunnar Myrdal's book An American Dilemma, a massive sociological study of black America published in 1944, received the kind of acclaim that liberals had bestowed on Lynd's Middletown fifteen years earlier. And, in 1948, the Democratic Party, for the first time in its history (prodded by a new organization of liberals, a young Hubert Humphery and a young Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.) formally committed itself to civil rights. Although concerns with class division and the ill effects of capitalist civilization did not disappear from the liberal agenda, they lost their primacy. The intensification of the Cold War pushed these issues further to the periphery; in some portions of the liberal community, they were banished altogether. Here, in the 1940s, are the roots of 1960s liberalism, a liberalism very different in language, tone, and content from the one espoused by a pre-World War I Herbert Croly or an interwar John Dewey."
Gary Gerstle, "The Protean Character of American Liberalism," American Historical Review 99, no.4, p.1070
Hitler's rise to power in one of the world's most technologically and culturally advanced societies directly challenged two convictions that had sustained American liberalism since the early 1920s: first, that the taming of capitalism was the preeminent problem confronting industrial societies and, second, that issues of racial and ethnic discrimination were best left alone or addressed indirectly, through programs of economic reform. The terrifying popularity of Nazi racist doctrines forced American liberals to reconsider their "hands-off" approach to problems of religious bigotry and racial hatred. These problems were not "secondary"; they were themselves primary. Racism and prejudice had to become subjects of political commentary and targets of social action.
This confrontation with Nazism induced a shift in liberal sensibilities that was, in the 1930s, subtle but would, in the 1940s, achieve seismic proportions. This magnitude of this shift can be discerned in the outpouring of books on racial problems and religious prejudice during the 1940s. Causes that had languished on the liberal agenda -- civil rights, Zionism, immigration reform -- were now embraced. Reinhold Niebuhr, the Protestant theologian who would have a large influence on post-World War II liberalism, excoriated his fellow liberals in 1942 for thinking that the distribution of property was a more fundamental cause of social division and conflict than were racial and ethnic differences. Gunnar Myrdal's book An American Dilemma, a massive sociological study of black America published in 1944, received the kind of acclaim that liberals had bestowed on Lynd's Middletown fifteen years earlier. And, in 1948, the Democratic Party, for the first time in its history (prodded by a new organization of liberals, a young Hubert Humphery and a young Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.) formally committed itself to civil rights. Although concerns with class division and the ill effects of capitalist civilization did not disappear from the liberal agenda, they lost their primacy. The intensification of the Cold War pushed these issues further to the periphery; in some portions of the liberal community, they were banished altogether. Here, in the 1940s, are the roots of 1960s liberalism, a liberalism very different in language, tone, and content from the one espoused by a pre-World War I Herbert Croly or an interwar John Dewey."
Gary Gerstle, "The Protean Character of American Liberalism," American Historical Review 99, no.4, p.1070