The Strange Death of American Liberalism

I recommend reading the political history, The Strange Death of American Liberalism, authored by professor H. W. Brands, especially now, ten years after the book was published. The author's prose sparkles. Brands' clarity of expression and wonderful use of metaphor makes for a most entertaining and rewarding read. Events in education over the past ten years give strong evidence that Brands' analysis was correct.




The author is a famous historian as well as a brilliant writer. Here is how Dr. Brands describes himself. See his website here.

Henry William Brands was born in Oregon, went to college in California, sold cutlery across the American West, and earned graduate degrees in mathematics and history in Oregon and Texas. He taught at Vanderbilt University and Texas A&M University before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History. He writes on American history and politics, with books including Traitor to His Class, Andrew Jackson, The Age of Gold, The First American, and TR. Several of his books have been bestsellers; two, Traitor to His Class and The First American, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. He lectures frequently on historical and current events, and can be seen and heard on national and international television and radio programs. His writings have been translated into Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Ukrainian.

Based on his treatment of controversial presidents Nixon and Reagan (which I find to be a projective test of a scholar's political beliefs), Dr. Brands comes across as a political moderate.

What does the book say? In a nutshell, The Strange Death of American Liberalism describes how liberal action, defined here as expansionist federal government, rarely happens in American history. However, Americans will allow the federal government to work where it can solve a problem better than any other institution. Only government can protect us from foreign enemies,and we have seen most government expansion during wartime. Brands believes that the long-lasting Cold War encouraged liberalism in domestic policy as well. When the United States left Vietnam and President Nixon resigned, American support for the Cold War and trust in government eroded. The country reverted back to its natural distrust of government, and therefore, a distrust of liberal policies.

Brands summarizes his thesis:

For a quarter century Americans had grown used to looking to Washington for leadership, first in matters of national security and then, as the Cold War suffused nearly all areas of American life, in such previously domestic matters as education, transportation, civil rights, and health care. As long as the Cold War preceded successfully for the United States, popular confidence in government appeared justified. A people accustomed to depending on government to protect them from nuclear annihilation didn't find it much of a stretch to look to government to address such comparatively minor challenges as an anachronistic system of race relations and lingering economic inequality. Yet when the war in Vietnam turned sour...the skein of popular trust in government unraveled....It was the liberalism of the Cold War era that was the anomaly (pp. 172-173).

Ironically, the most effective liberal in American history, President Lyndon Johnson, planted the seeds of liberalism's destruction with his prosecution of the Cold War in far away Vietnam.

Liberals, like everyone else, do not want to hear about the unpopularity of their political views, and therefore it was no surprise when esteemed (and quite liberal) historian Eric Foner panned parts of the book. Foner's criticisms, that liberalism reached its modern form in the 1930s New Deal and that the New Deal, not the Cold War, was the defining moment of liberalism, were anticipated by Brands (P. 175). Foner also criticizes Brands' lack of analysis of liberal ideas, especially liberals' pursuit of civil liberties and the decidedly non-liberal response to the events of September 11th, 2001. Foner does enjoy the book's "laser-like" focus on this piece of political history, its usefulness as a survey of American political history, and agrees with the author's portrayal of the Revolutionary War times. (See Foner's review here.)

I am quite interested in how the Cold War resulted in a Federal power grab from the what used to be a state issue--the funding and management of public education. Brands describes (pp.78-79) how the Sputnik scare and the Cold War made education a national priority and the business of Washington and not just the state capitols. The National Defense Education Act authorized $1 billion in spending (in 1958 dollars) and initiated the Advanced Placement (AP) program ubiquitous in high schools today. Johnson's Great Society programs increased federal aid to K-12 education (P. 92).

Few people consider "compassionate conservative" president George W. Bush a liberal in any respect. Yet, in 2001 he crafted No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which further expanded federal power into each state's management of K-12 education, a fairly liberal idea. The law was supported by both conservatives and liberals but not for long. NCLB critics complain that NCLB mandates can never be satisfied, eventually making all schools "failing schools," and the law has become increasingly unpopular among education professionals. We may have seen the apex of federal support (or interference, you pick) in education. Cracks are forming under the enforcement of NCLB, and states are finding ways to get around pieces of the law and perhaps its enforcement entirely. See Montana's reaction here. If Brands is correct, we can expect, as part of liberalism's eclipse, less federal funding for education and less support for NCLB or a rewrite of the law. I will let the reader surmise what the death of liberalism means for the future direction of Congress and the executive branch.