Every day I try to read Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American. She does a good job of keeping up with current events and placing them in historical context. Last week she wrote about the “liberal consensus” that existed after World War II before its demise beginning in the 1980s.
According to her definition, among Americans there was a general agreement and understanding borne of experience that characterized both private and public sectors for over thirty years. The government had 3 major roles to play: (1) regulate business; (2) provide a basic social safety net; and (3) promote infrastructure.
Of course, there was opposition to this view, but for the most part, Americans accepted these roles as reasonable and moderate ways to accommodate the needs of the economy and the citizenry. Today just the mention of government brings forth outcries of “socialism” and worse. Still, for years we appreciated how the “liberal consensus” provided for a prosperous and unified commonweal. It was an “American System” reminiscent of Henry Clay’s efforts to unite the country prior to the Civil War.
Shared experiences such as unbridled capitalism, labor unrest, the Great Depression, and the emergence of the United States as the preeminent world power created a consensus that worked until the 1980s when Republicans began slashing government and turning its functions over to the private sector.
Looking back, history tells us that the triumph of one ideology over the other, conservative or liberal, results in abuses and corruption. The United States from the very beginning has always existed as an hybrid, neither fish nor fowl, in the definition of political systems. We forged forth in our own way doing what worked for us, eschewing long-held political definitions. We should be doing that now rather than fighting over the purist approaches favored by some.