Has America Become More Liberal?

On June 29, 1915, the New York Times ran a series of articles on the subject of this blog post. Below are some excerpts from two of the authors: Akhil Amar and Russell Moore.

America and its Constitution have been moving leftward from the founding to the present.

After ousting a hereditary monarch and an unelected Parliament, revolutionaries in the 1770s initially crafted the Articles of Confederation, a pact that emphasized states’ rights, almost to the exclusion of government by a central staff. A decade later, Americans tossed that overboard to create a liberal, egalitarian national government featuring far more central power to tax and regulate and far more democracy.

Reforms included an elected House, and an end to religious qualifications, and property qualifications for federal public service — all of which came from a stunning series of votes across the continent permitting unprecedented political participation and extraordinary free speech. A Bill of Rights, demanded by the populace, quickly supplemented the original plan, promising a range of liberal rights including free expression, religious equality and safeguards for criminal defendants.

Slavery and racism were the snakes in this Edenic garden, and in the 1860s a new generation of liberal reformers — self-described radical Republicans — arose to right old wrongs and move the Constitution further left. Three Reconstruction amendments promised racial equality, broader liberty and enhanced federal power to protect both. A half-century later, another generation of liberal reformers — self-described progressives — added another cluster of amendments that further expanded federal power, democratized and nationalized the Senate, enfranchised women and openly endorsed redistributive taxation.

A half century after that, in the 1960s, yet another generation of liberal reformers added another cluster of liberal amendments, extending democracy to the poor, the young and the District of Columbia (a largely black city). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.  As these mid-century amendments were unfolding, the Warren Court revolutionized judicial doctrine by bringing it into alignment with a generally liberal Constitution.

The current era — the Age of Barack Obama and Anthony Kennedy — fits into a larger pattern. Barack Obama, a Black, left-of-center lawyer from Illinois was elected and re-elected in a manner that redeemed the deepest spirit of the 15th Amendment (black suffrage) and the 19th Amendment (women suffrage).

A majority of white men voted against Obama, but thanks to the earlier leftist amendments that allowed others to vote, Obama won, and two of his nominees sit on the current Supreme Court. Mainstream Protestants no longer dominate America’s highest offices. (Anthony Kennedy is a Catholic, as are five other justices; the other three are Jewish.) Obamacare is a culmination of the project of earlier constitutional progressives, who championed redistributive federal policies.

Does this all mean that America has permanently adopted a liberalism that is “cast in concrete?” Are we forever destined to more and more progressivism in government and “political correctness?”

History doesn’t work in the linear way conservatives fear that it will, forever changing the way we live. The 1960s brought real change in American culture in some ways good and in some ways bad, but it hardly brought the dawning of the Age of Aquarius the counter-culture expected. The Reagan years likewise brought about some lasting changes but it did not usher in the theocracy of television evangelists some hysterical progressives claimed was coming. Cultural revolutions tend to overreach, and generations tend to swing back and forth on cultural issues.

As a social conservative, I am hopeful because I think much of the culture — especially as it relates to the sexual revolution — is simply unsustainable. These developments are unsustainable because many of them are rooted in a view of human nature that often ignores biology, history and tradition as well as moral theology.

Moreover, a view of progress that ignores the limits of human nature and civilization often leads to the sort of excessive pride or arrogance that overreaches and self-contradicts.

Social conservatives must recognize the bend of the present culture but not over-interpret it as the bend of history itself. We must articulate why we believe, for instance, that children need both a mother and a father and why laissez-faire sexuality hurts people, families and communities. But we must do so by seeking to persuade those who fundamentally disagree with us, not just by screaming at them. And we must keep a witness going for future generations who may well be damaged by the choices of their parents. They may be seeking a different, more ancient, path.