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From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues

Liberalism

American liberalism gained its contemporary meaning through President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs in the 1930s. Roosevelt’s New Deal liberalism changed ideas about government’s duty and responsibility in the nation’s economic life by developing federal welfare programs, redistributing wealth, and enhancing the potential for equal opportunity. New Deal legislation gave trade unions new protections and encouraged their growth, altering the balance of power between employers and employees. Roosevelt believed in the power of the government to protect people from “disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable.”

In the mid-1960s, liberal policies included the expansion of government health, education, and other social programs for poor and low-income families. Unlike New Deal programs, President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs addressed racism through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and included African Americans in the social programs. The civil rights movement, which had created pressure for passage of legislation promoting racial justice, inspired women, gays and lesbians, Hispanics, Native Americans, and other groups to press for recognition of their causes and for legislation to protect them. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) serves as one example of an attempt to define and guarantee a group’s rights. The U.S. Supreme Court also participated in the liberal agenda through its 1954 decision desegregating schools in Brown v. Board of Education and its 1973 decision legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade.

The liberal agenda came under increasingly intense scrutiny in the 1970s as citizens evaluated the financial costs of social programs and changes in social relationships. They found the first too high and the second too unsettling. Voters expressed their frustration with liberal policies by electing conservatives Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush to the presidency. By the 1988 presidential elections, the word liberal had become a pejorative term and was referred to as the “L” word.

In the first decades of the twenty-first century, liberal issues still included reproductive rights and women’s equality. In addition, new issues were added to the agenda, including gay rights. In 2010 Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed, a law that permits gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military. In 2012, President Obama announced that he favored allowing same-sex marriages. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same sex couples could marry nationwide.

See also: Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII; Lesbian Rights; Voting Rights Act of 1965

References: Eric Alterman, “The Fight for American Liberalism,” The Nation, April 30, 2012.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"Liberalism." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, edited by Suzanne O’Dea, Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0560.
APA 7th
Liberalism. From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, In S. O’Dea (Ed.), Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0560.
CMOS 17th
"Liberalism." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, Edited by Suzanne O’Dea. Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0560.