The Strange Death of American Liberalism

by H.W. Brands

In this provocative book, H. W. Brands confronts the vital question of why an ever-increasing number of Americans do not trust the federal government to improve their lives and to heal major social ills. How is it that government has come to be seen as the source of many of our problems, rather than the potential means of their solution? How has the word liberal become a term of abuse in American political discourse? From the Revolution on, argues Brands, Americans have been chronically skeptical of their government. This book succinctly traces this skepticism, demonstrating that it is only during periods of war that Americans have set aside their distrust and looked to their government to defend them. The Cold War, Brands shows, created an extended--and historically anomalous--period of dependence, thereby allowing for the massive expansion of the American welfare state. Since the 1970s, and the devastating blow dealt to Cold War ideology by America's defeat in Vietnam, Americans have returned to their characteristic distrust of government. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Brands contends, the fate of American liberalism was sealed--and we continue to live with the consequences of its demise.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, American History

192 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

H.W. Brands is an acclaimed American historian and author of over thirty books on U.S. history, including Pulitzer Prize finalists The First American and Traitor to His Class. He holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his PhD. Originally trained in mathematics, Brands turned to history as a way to pursue his passion for writing. His biographical works on figures like Franklin, Jackson, Grant, and both Roosevelts have earned critical and popular praise for their readability and depth. Raised in Oregon and educated at Stanford, Reed College, and Portland State, he began his teaching career in high schools before entering academia. He later taught at Texas A&M and Vanderbilt before returning to UT Austin. Brands challenges conventional reverence for the Founding Fathers, advocating for a more progressive and evolving view of American democracy. In addition to academic works, his commentary has featured in major documentaries. His books, published internationally and translated into multiple languages, examine U.S. political, economic, and cultural development with compelling narrative force. Beyond academia, he is a public intellectual contributing to national conversations on history and governance.

Reviews

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

As other reviewers have noted, Brands's work here is incredibly readable and intellectually stimulating. Although I am in concurrence with these same reviewers that Brands perhaps oversimplifies liberalism, Brands provides a history of popular American attitudes towards government-size that showcases a compelling argument: the Cold War's conclusion undercut the mainstream acceptance of liberal ideology in the dominant culture because we lost the political rival we measured our own sense of progress and exceptionalism against--however blindsided some of that self-measurements may have been. A principal limitation of this book though is its publication date. Published prior to 9-11, Brands could not fathom how Bush would respond to al-Qaeda and expand our government in response. Contextualized in this way, Brands's work here offers scholars of American culture insight into a strand of American political thought and its reception, even if aspects of Brand's core thesis seem less compelling in the rearview of American history.

[John Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a lifelong liberal/progressive, I'm always interested in books and ideas about why Americans took a conservative turn after the Kennedy-Johnson era. This book provides another take on it. Brands posits that government has always grown during times of War, but contracted shortly after. Government involvement in domestic affairs seems to be a corollary of increased government involvement in international affairs. After WWII, government did not shrink back. Instead, we entered the Cold War, which kept us on war footing and allowed liberalism and big government to continue to thrive. However, with Vietnam War, the opening the China, perestroika, and eventually the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War ended, slowing or reversing the engine that carried liberalism in its wake. The book was intellectually stimulating and eminently readable.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 3 out of 5]

HW Brands' work, which I've read a fair amount of, is often really interesting in his ability to make sweeping interpretations of US history. What America Owes the World was a fascinating example of this, a book that all students of US foreign policy and intellectual history should read. This book was less compelling, however. The basic argument is that Americans have a historical skepticism of the idea that a highly interventionist gov't can play a positive role in economy, society, etc. He defines the inverse of this skepticism as liberalism, which is a fairly practical definition, although it misses aspects of individual rights and the striving for social justice that are essential to liberalism. Brands argues that the New Deal was not the big turning point for the rise of liberalism, as it was ideologically haphazard and in many ways temporary and didn't necessarily cure Americans of anti-gov't skepticism. It wasn't even WWII, in which most Americans accepted a larger role for gov't with the understanding that this would be temporary. Rather it was the Cold War, which seemed to be a permanent state of peril that required a large and interventionist state to rally the country's resources to combat Soviet influence while reforming society at home to align American realities more with its ideals. He claims that this consensus or new faith in government collapsed in the 60s and 70s because of Watergate, Vietnam, and the downturn of hte economy, although he oddly characterizes this as the collapse of the Cold War consensus at home.

Brands' argument is more effective for explaining a key reason for what Jeff Cowie calls the "Great Exception," the period from the 30s to the 70s where most Americans expected and largely accepted reformist, interventionist, regulatory liberal governance. The Cold War definitely had a role in sustaining that acceptance, but I don't think the ostensible collapse of the Cold War in the 70s (detente hardly meant the Cold War went away) really explains the decline of liberalism. Certainly the American people became more skeptical of the Cold War during the 1970s and way more skeptical of US interventions abroad, but the Cold War remained the dominant framework through which Americans saw the international scene well through the 1970s.

I think this book would have been more successful if Brands had summarized other reasons for the rise and fall of liberalism (or the New Deal Consensus, as I prefer to call the mid-20th century era of liberal preeminence). Clearly the Civil Rights movement and other rights-based movements of hte 60s and 70s kicked off massive splits in the parties, a conservative political uprising, and culture wars that have fed the political divide. He also doesn't mention the conservative intellectual movement. Furthermore, a chapter on Cold War liberals like Schlesinger, Niebuhr, and the ADA would have really bolstered his argument that liberals pioneered and benefitted from the Cold War. Brands could have acknowledged these major factors and then proceeded to his more specific argument about the effects of the COld War on sustaining liberalism. I know this is supposed to be a short book, but it really needed to at least nod to these other factors. In short, I think the overall point of this book is worth considering but that it is a bit undercooked and needed at least one more chapter about the Cold War liberals themselves. Still worth reading for US foreign relations scholars, but note that this is in no way a history of liberalism in modern US history (as Brands duly acknowledges).

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting exploration but unfortunately somewhat biased.