FiveBooks Interview
Eric Foner on the Evolution of Liberalism
thebrowser.com

The historian chooses five books illustrating how concepts
of American liberalism have changed over the past 50
years, and tells us about the tension that lies at the
heart of liberalism today

As a historian, what do you make of the American left's
turn back to the term progressivism?
 
Ever since Reagan and the first Bush turned liberal into a
term of abuse, it's very hard to find politicians who will
forthrightly proclaim themselves liberals. The term
progressive is a substitute. It sounds good. How can
anyone be against things that are progressive as opposed
to retrograde? Of course, the term progressive relates to
the Progressive Era of a century ago, when certain views
that we associate with liberalism entered the political
spectrum. Things like governmental regulation of
corporations and provision of basic social security for
people. If you read the platform of Theodore Roosevelt's
1912 Progressive Party, it laid out much of the agenda for
20th century liberalism through the New Deal.
 
Modern liberals and turn-of-the-century progressives share
a similar view of the role of government in society. But
going back to the term progressive is a little misleading.
Earlier progressives had no interest, by and large, in
race issues. They accepted segregation. And they were
uninterested in civil liberties, which has become a basic
element of modern liberalism. They were statists - they
weren't interested in standing up against the state. So
today's progressivism is different from what progressivism
meant a century ago.
 
What would you define as the core tenets of today's
progressivism?
 
As I see it, the core tenets are somewhat at odds with
each other. On the one hand you have the belief in
governmental assistance to the less fortunate,
governmental regulation of economic activity and very
modest governmental efforts to redistribute wealth to
assist those further down the social scale. So it's active
government, in the pursuit of social goals, when it comes
to the economy. On the other hand, modern liberalism
emphasises privacy, individual rights and civil liberties
- keeping government out of your life when it comes to
things like abortion rights. In other words, in the
private realm liberalism is for autonomy and lack of
government intervention. And also I think today's
liberalism is strongly identified with the rights of
various minority groups within American society. This
multicultural element was not really part of liberalism
until the radical movements of the 1960s. One of the
reasons I chose these books is that I think liberalism has
changed significantly since the 1960s. It is no longer the
same thing it was in the era of Theodore Roosevelt or even
Franklin Roosevelt.

The Tragedy of American Diplomacy
By William Appleman Williams

Let's begin with a revisionist history of American
diplomacy that was first published in 1959. The Tragedy of
American Diplomacy by William Appleman Williams.
 
The reason it's well worth reading, half a century after
it was written, is that the messianic view of the world it
critiques is one of the elements of 20th century
liberalism. Stretching back to Woodrow Wilson, people who
believe in a strong state have been tempted by the idea of
spreading the American way throughout the world. It's not
enough for the government to improve American society;
they want to remake the world in our image. Liberals
generally embrace this Wilsonian vision. Indeed, Obama is
a good Wilsonian.
 
Williams's book remains important because it shows that
foreign interventionism and free trade is deeply embedded
in liberal history. Williams critiques American foreign
policy as a foreign policy of good intentions. Liberals
want to improve the world beyond our borders and broaden
the rights of people overseas. The imperial temptation is
something that liberals succumb to as much as
conservatives.
 
How did the book help shape the agenda of the American
left?
 
It challenged the Cold War mentality. Williams was one of
the first to challenge the premise that the expansion of
American power is by definition the expansion of freedom.
He pointed to the fact that we intervene in all sorts of
countries in support of tyranny. It's one of those books
whose importance was magnified by the events that came
after it, like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. During the
Vietnam War, as people became more aware of the fallacies
of American foreign policy, they turned back to Williams
for an explanation.

for the rest of this interview, go to
http://thebrowser.com/interviews/eric-foner-on-evolution-liberalism

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