March 03, 2018
Liberals Always Win
Today, it is a common feeling among liberals that they are losing the perennial struggle with conservatives over the direction of the country. This is only natural, but the historical record actually shows that liberals have always won their battles against conservatives, not just recently, but going back 150 years.
The United States was born as a limited democracy, confined initially to white males, and with a very minimal central government that did little to mitigate the insecurities and risks of life. But from the beginning there have been those who wanted a government that did more and that worked to extend the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all Americans. To achieve that meant to create the modern liberal welfare state that we enjoy today. This was a process that has literally taken centuries, and each generation fought its own battles and then the next generation of liberals took up the challenge of expanding on what had been achieved.
The first struggles along these lines was over slavery. The Republican Party was born out of the anti-slavery movement in the 1850’s, and was the party of liberals of the day. Abraham Lincoln, considered the best of all American Presidents, led the Republicans to the White House, and then waged a civil war to end slavery. But not only did he achieve that with the passage of the 13th amendment, he passed two other crucial amendments to the Constitution, the 14th and 15th. The 14th declared anyone born within the US to be a citizen, which gave citizenship status not only to African-Americans, but also in fact to Native Americans. It also declared that all Americans are entitled to the “equal protection” of the law. This “equal protection” clause eventually became the basis of a wide assortment of liberal legal rulings that extended rights to many classes of citizens that suffered discrimination. The 15th amendment guaranteed that former slaves and all citizens had the right to vote. Discrimination in the South blocked this right for a century until the 1960’s. But it was recognized long ago.
In the period 1890-1920 the left-right split, that characterizes American politics, started to take shape. This was known as the Progressive Era, and a huge number of liberal reforms were enacted. At the beginning of the Progressive Era, Republicans were quite prominent in the movement, particularly President Teddy Roosevelt. By the end of the era, the Republican Party had become the party of business interests, while the Democrats were becoming the liberal party in American politics, a transition that would be cemented under FDR and the New Deal of the 1930’s.
The environmental movement was born and Teddy Roosevelt created the National Park Service. Action was taken to break up the big business monopolies (called trusts, hence the term “trust-busting”) with its biggest victory the breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust into multiple separate oil companies. Muckraking journalists exposed abuses that led to major reforms. The Pure Food and Drug Act created the FDA and abolished peddlers of fake medicines. The Federal Trade Commission and the Interstate Commerce Commission were created to regulate abuses in railroads and other industries. The Federal Reserve Bank was created, giving the US a modern central bank. The US Constitution was amended four times, to create an income tax, to make Senators directly elected by the voters, to prohibit alcohol, and finally to give women the right to vote. The prohibition on alcohol was the only Progressive achievement that failed to stick, as it was basically unenforceable and rejected by the public.
The 1920’s was a Republican decade, and liberals achieved little, but with the Great Depression came the election of Franklin Roosevelt, the greatest President since Lincoln, who utterly transformed the US. FDR fought the Depression and led the country to victory in World War Two. His greatest liberal achievements include creating Social Security, the most popular government program of all time, which ensured that elderly people who no longer could work would be spared poverty by having a guaranteed pension as long as they lived. FDR also created the Securities and Exchange Commission, which brought oversight and regulation of Wall Street. FDR also put in place policies that helped African-Americans, which began the process of moving African-American voters away from the Republican Party, which they had supported for obvious reasons since the days of Lincoln. FDR put in place the FDIC, which brought oversight to the banking sector, and guaranteed deposits against loss if the bank were to fail.
FDR was succeeded by Harry Truman after his death in 1945. Truman was a remarkably successful President in shaping America’s postwar policies and setting up the system of alliances and containment that worked to eventually defeat the Soviet Union 45 years later. At home, he faced a Republican Congress that prevented him from expanding on FDR’s New Deal. But Truman laid down the path forward for the Democratic Party. He committed the Democrats to civil rights, even though he was from Missouri, and integrated the Armed Forces by Executive Order. He also proposed universal health care for the first time.
Under Eisenhower, the federal government went passive, doing little to address the growing issues facing the country. But importantly, Eisenhower accepted the New Deal, and did nothing to reverse all of the achievements of his two predecessors. This solidified the place of the New Deal reforms in American life.
But while Eisenhower was marking time, the Supreme Court became the focus of liberalism in the US. Between 1954 and 1974 the Supreme Court reshaped American life. Beginning with Brown vs Board of Education, which outlawed the separate schools that African-Americans had to attend under segregation, the Court dramatically expanded the rights of citizens. It said that electoral districts had to be equal population, that criminal defendants had rights to remain silent, to have a lawyer at government expense, and that police could not use evidence gathered illegally and without proper warrants to convict people. It struck down laws banning interracial marriage, banning contraception, and in the 1970’s ruled that women had the right to an abortion. The court also stopped the government from imposing religion, most forcefully by banning school prayer and by blocking the teaching of creationism in public schools. Liberals loved these changes and conservatives railed that they were responsible for destroying America.
In the 1960’s the US saw another burst of liberal activism by the Federal government. Most critically in 1964 and 1965 under Lyndon Johnson, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act that finally put into law the rights African-Americans had been granted a hundred years earlier. The fight for civil rights was led by liberals, and was one of their greatest achievements (and obviously, African-Americans in particular fought for these changes and deserve the credit). But this era of liberal change also extended to women’s rights, and feminism started to open doors to careers and opportunities long denied to half the nation.
Lyndon Johnson also passed Medicare and Medicaid, which brought health care to the elderly and poor, two groups that could never get private health insurance. Medicare in particular, by providing hospitals steady payment for taking care of the sickest patients, was instrumental in creating the vast modern American healthcare system that we all rely upon. Johnson also began the War on Poverty, with programs such as food stamps, unemployment insurance, welfare, and school loans and grants. Even under Richard Nixon, liberals in Congress were able to get a number of programs enacted. This included the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the establishment of affirmative action programs, passage of the Clean Air and Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act.
The Liberals greatest failure during this time was the war in Vietnam. The war was a pointless exercise that divided the country and devastated Vietnam. But liberals in the end did achieve two things. First, they turned Democrats into a party that would never again seek out a war of choice. Second, they got rid of the draft, which was very unfair in how it mostly fell on the backs of poorer Americans.
By the mid-1970’s most of the liberal agenda was in place, and a strong conservative reaction was well under way, culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan. But while conservatives were ascendant, they again made their peace with the liberal past. When Medicare was being debated, Reagan had said that it would mean the end of freedom in America, but as President he actually supported Medicare and made no effort to undo the Great Society in any real sense. And under his successor George H. W. Bush, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which gave disabled Americans a much better chance at fully participating in society. Under Clinton, liberals did not have any major achievements, but the issue of universal health care was put forward, and the Democrats as a party came to support it which would matter in the next decade. Clinton did expand the earned income tax credit, one of the most effective anti-poverty tools the government has, but he was still governing in an era dominated by conservatism and the backlash to the liberal 1960’s.
This brings us to the most recent decade and the achievements of Obama. Before Obama, a Republican Congress and President did expand Medicare by adding a prescription drug benefit, but no further action was taken on health care. Under Obama, the passage of the Affordable Care Act was perhaps the most important liberal accomplishment since Medicare. Obama added millions of Americans to the ranks of those with health insurance, and to get to universal coverage from here is within striking distance. Almost 90% of persons in the US have health insurance now. Obama created the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, to help protect consumers from the abuses of the banks and financial industry. Obama also jump-started renewable energy in the US, and it is now self-sustaining. Trump can’t stop it. DACA, the program to shield undocumented immigrants who came here as children, helped almost 2 million people, and though Trump is trying to undo that, the political battle is ongoing. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court handed down a huge expansion of gay rights with the marriage equality ruling. Obama steered the nation through its greatest economic crisis since the 1930’s quite successfully, and saved the auto industry.
Conservatives always fight the current battle with immense effort. They spend millions of dollars on campaigns, they spread their propaganda on Fox News, and they try their hardest to convince Americans that the liberals (who are currently Democrats) are out to destroy the country they love. They conveniently ignore the fact that in every generation going back to the Civil War, conservatives (who were Democrats back in the 1860’s), said the same thing, and lost those battles in the end. But not only did conservatives lose time and again, the conservatives of the next generation embraced those previous liberal reforms in most cases, or in some cases grudgingly accepted them. The current Republican Party has seniors as its most reliable voters, and so is completely in favor of Social Security and Medicare, two programs they bitterly opposed when first voted on in Congress. No Republican campaigns against student loans, or unemployment insurance, or the right of women to work wherever they choose, or wants to reinstate the draft, or overturn the Voting Rights Act, or put prayer back in school (they used to want to do that, but have finally given up). Conservatives seem to think that the prior generation of liberals may have been right in the end, but not the next one. I think history teaches a different lesson.
Today, it is important to remember that this pattern has not changed. Trump could not undo Obamacare. It is now firmly part of America. He can’t stop renewables. He wants to kick the DACA kids out of America, but the Republicans know that is an electoral disaster, and in the end will back down somehow. A blue wave is going to sweep the Democrats back into the control of the House of Representatives in November. And in 2020 the Democrats will win the White House and Senate control. At that point we will see another burst of liberal activism. There will be comprehensive immigration reform, universal healthcare, a major increase in the minimum wage, a vigorous move toward more renewable energy and electric cars, and perhaps an expansion of day care for working moms. We will also undo the corporate tax cuts the Republicans put into place. All of these reforms will be opposed by conservatives, but in the end they will happen, and in the end conservatives will somehow come to accept them. American history moves in one direction. Conservative victories are temporary and ephemeral, liberal victories are permanent changes that are built on by the next generation.
Trump wants to “Make America Great Again”. America became the richest, most powerful country in the world in the decades between 1933 and 1972. These were the years where America became immensely prosperous, extended equality in a legal sense to its minorities and women, and took on the leadership of the Free World in the Cold War. It was also an era dominated by liberalism. Liberals are the ones who made this country great.
