Theodore Lowi’s famous The End of Liberalism (1978) merely said in words what Ronald Reagan and company were about to execute in practice. One of the curiosities of history is that words change meaning and that people who call themselves one thing in one era are called another by thinkers of a later era. As a historian, he is concerned with blocking out its historical beginning and its historical end. Many progressives at the turn of the century had dreamed of a cooperative commonwealth that would include government planning, and some like Henry George had called for the confiscation of the “excess increment” that landowners earned. Brinkley compares Warren’s account, which was second-hand, with that of T. Harry Williams, who interviewed scores of Long’s associates and acquaintances for his biography. The trick in that equation was the definition of harm. He describes the life of Allard Lowenstein, the liberal activist who moved from surprisingly early activism against racism in the south to anti-war protest organizing. By the early 20th century in America, “liberalism” had acquired meanings that Mill might have thought more appropriate for the conservatives of his day. He died on June 16, 2019 in Manhatten, New York City, New York, USA. Alan Brinkley was born on June 2, 1949 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA as Alan David Brinkley.
The New Deal was in some respects merely the realization and embodiment of the ideas that emerged out of those concerns. By this point, conservatives were willing to abandon the word liberal altogether. Margaret Thatcher’s famous declaration that there is no society (a remark that would have made many traditional organicist conservatives wince) was evidence of the mainstream conservative acceptance of libertarian ideas. Liberty and liberalism were now in some respects equatable with anti-conservatism once again. His chapters on the early life and rise to power of Roosvelt and on the life of the New Deal itself offer little that is new, but his account of the New Deal and the South is of much greater interest. It had meant personal liberty, the right, as Mill put it, to act freely without restraint so long as one did not harm others. Mill, who felt economic life should be unfettered, considered himself a liberal, and his “On Liberty” still makes for mandatory reading for anyone interested in the history of the idea of personal freedom and its limits.
It would probably be more accurate to say that people of a progressive bent politically and socially had been for some time before the New Deal came along noticing that unplanned capitalism was laden with dangers. Alan Brinkley, who died at age 70, was one of America's greatest historians and intellectuals. In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill called the conservatives “the stupid party.” The conservatives of his time were mild authoritarians given to passing Sedition Acts to silence opposition.
The modern era would witness the birth of libertarianism, a mostly rightwing phenomenon that champions the absolute rights of individuals against the state (and against society at large). Brinkley touches on similar figures in the course of his history of post-New Deal liberalism. If anything, this liberalism was something neo-Millite conservatives detested, and they were especially annoyed that a word they found useful and important (who could argue with an ideal of liberty?) But as Brinkley notes, he was someone who used government powers for the good of everyone, standing up in the process to unscrupulous economic interests who sought to stand in the way of his reforms. Crucial to the libertarian belief system was the equation of state socialism and state liberalism with the dangers of pre-war fascism.
A history of the word suggests that liberty is uncanny; it can mean either personal freedom or the government action that might be seen as curtailing personal freedom. The government would not be able to promote globalism with such success if it weren’t capable of directing the economy to a certain very important extent. Liberty is the freedom to act within a context in which others’ ability to harm one is restrained. The 1950s and the 1960s would be the great eras for this kind of legal liberalism, from the Griswold decision which gave people the right to use contraception to the the Miranda decision which protected them from the police. Brinkley was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Ann (Fischer) and Brinkley's scholarship has focused mainly on the period of the His essay "The Problem of American Conservatism" was published in the He was one of three American historians to have been both Brinkley was the senior author of two best-selling, frequently updated American history textbooks, Brinkley took over sole responsibility for the ninth edition of the He lived in New York with his wife, Evangeline Morphos, and his daughter, Elly. The new economic libertarianism that is called globalism–the spread worldwide of the American model of anti-labor efficiency and lowered national barriers–would not be possible, however, nor is it likely it would be promoted so avidly by a latter-day liberal like Bill Clinton, if it were not based on the established fact of a successful liberal agenda. He was married to Evangeline Morphos. Sometimes, he noted, the same group uses the same word differently for polemical reasons. He was the Allan Nevins Professor of History until his death. They were the intellectual equivalent of Gone With the Wind, which came out a year before their important manifesto.