Episode 13A - Special: Defining Liberalism

From Boomers to Millennials: A Modern US History Podcast

After spending our last episode discussing the rise of Cold War Liberalism, we take time out from our historical narrative during this special supplemental episode to explain the origins of the "liberal" political label, to identify why it became widely popular during the mid-20th-Century US, & to track how the term became so stigmatized by the American Right (& also the Far Left) that it has declined in popularity by the 21st Century. This episode briefly takes us back to the American & French Revolutions of the 18th Century, which were inspired by Enlightenment ideals proposing individual rights as a check upon the power of absolute monarchs. We then describe how middle-class liberals & working-class socialists sometimes cooperated but often clashed in 19th Century Europe. However, because there was no powerful Socialist movement in the United States, a Left-Liberal movement was able to emerge out of the 20th Century Progressive reform era that kept middle-class professionals & working-class laborers within the same Democratic Party coalition. That "New Deal" coalition of left-liberalism remained intact until the economic problems & culture wars of the late 20th Century weakened the coalition & allowed American conservatives to successfully turn "liberal" into a dirty word. In the 21st Century, the word "liberal" is still more favored by the American center-left's enemies than its advocates, but liberal philosophies have still left a major lasting impact on the modern United States.

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