Has American Liberalism Run Its Course?

Liberalism is a political philosophy focused on advancing human freedom. The main components of this freedom throughout America’s history are individual rights and civil liberties, constitutionalism and the rule of law, democratic citizenship, and a market economy with social protections.

Both political parties have been dedicated in some capacity to all four of these variations of freedom. Until recently, liberalism has been the dominant philosophy animating both U.S. Democrats and Republicans. Unlike our European counterparts, American politics never produced a truly successful or sustained radical movement dedicated to replacing liberalism with something more extreme from either the left or right. American politics in the last century was primarily concerned with debates about how best to achieve more freedom for more people along with fights over the proper role of government intervention, taxation and spending, and the private sector in securing this freedom.

Democrats from FDR forward emphasized both the negative and positive sides of freedom as represented in his famous Four Freedoms address to Congress in 1941: freedom of speech and worship; freedom from want and fear. In the twentieth century, Democratic liberalism focused much of its energy on building up a stronger national government to aid economic recovery, pursue national development, and protect workers and their families. In the second half of the century, liberalism also added a focus on increasing political equality and individual rights for all Americans—particularly black people and women who faced historical discrimination in society and by government itself. Democratic liberalism since the end of the twentieth century under presidents Bill Clinton through Barack Obama and Joe Biden primarily concerned itself with reforming government and working with rather than against the market economy while protecting existing social welfare programs to help deal with emerging problems from globalization.

Republican liberalism, in comparison, represented a continuation of traditional nineteenth century liberal ideals as a challenge to the more interventionist New Deal version, culminating in the presidency of Ronald Reagan and his focus on limited government, lower taxation, expanded market freedoms, and deregulation. Republican liberalism was augmented by more traditionally conservative ideas about the importance of the family, religion and other institutions, devolution of power to states and localities, and concern about the unintended consequences of government intervention in the economy and attempts to alter the dominant culture. On the international front, both Democratic and Republican liberals in the last century were basically united in fighting totalitarian threats to democracy and in pursuing a strong military with active U.S. diplomatic engagement abroad to protect American interests.

All in all, it was a heck of a good run for American liberalism! The defeat of our totalitarian rivals. Historic peace and prosperity. The strongest economy in the world for many decades. Some of the highest living standards of any country at any point in time. A growing middle class. More rights for more people. Unmatched scientific, medical, technological, and cultural achievements. American liberalism, as represented in the values and policies of both political parties in different eras, produced a nation truly deserving of the patriotic love and commitment of its citizens.

But have we reached the end of the line for American liberalism? Is that it? Are we destined to suffer through decades of hoary nostalgia and “ah America in the good old days” self-delusion? It’s too early to answer these questions definitively but the evidence suggests American liberalism—as both a generator of new ideas and as a viable ideology in both political parties—has hit a ceiling that isn’t getting any higher.

On the Democratic side, the last significant and unifying achievement of liberalism was Barack Obama’s health care plan passed in 2010—a plan with little popular backing at the time but one that grew into a well-supported if flawed effort to achieve a century-long dream of near universal health care for all Americans.

Yet since the passage of the practical and politically feasible Affordable Care Act, what have Democratic liberals really achieved—or even proposed?

Instead of pragmatic, universal solutions to the problems of working- and middle-class Americans, Democrats after Obama went off on extreme ideological tangents and illiberal fads from structural racism and transgender ideology to decriminalization and open borders to the socialist “Green New Deal” and other radical climate policies. Notably, all of these illiberal “ideas” produced significant public backlash from a wide array of American voters and are now in the process of being dismantled or disregarded.

On the Republican side, the traditional party of Reagan has basically discarded all its past social and economic liberal commitments in favor of Trump’s peculiar blend of command-and-control tariff and trade policies, unrestrained executive authority, withdrawal from global allies and international security arrangements, and the use of governmental legal and bureaucratic authority to attack and prosecute perceived enemies. “Postliberal” ideas that explicitly reject individualism as the foundation of American life are now dominant in a party that that feels the need “to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,” according to Vice President JD Vance.

However, as with the Democrats, Trump’s illiberal Republican Party is already generating significant voter backlash that may result in complete reversals of its own in due time.

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Looking at the sorry state of contemporary liberalism, it’s easy to agree with Ruy Teixeira’s and Yuval Levin’s theory of “Politics Without Winners.” It’s no coincidence that as both Democrats and Republicans abandoned their past liberalism in favor of more extreme ideas and alternatives, neither party has been able to build a sustainable majority as both FDR and Ronald Reagan did in their times.

It's just a hunch, or maybe naïve nostalgia, but whichever party finds its way back to its liberal foundations first will be best positioned to break out of the 50-50 split in American politics. For both Democrats and Republicans, this means no more playing around with illiberal leftist or national-populist cultural and economic theories with limited appeal to most Americans.

So what’s the alternative?

Americans clearly are searching for greater economic security and personal dignity in life. Many voters on both sides of the party divide feel overlooked and underappreciated. They feel on edge and somewhat fearful about losing whatever small foothold they have at work, in their families, and in their communities. The great American Dream—itself produced by the development and application of different liberal ideas from both parties across the twentieth century—seems like a romantic story about a different country at a different time. More ideological movements on the populist left and right blame liberalism itself for these failures.

But Americans haven’t completely given up on the American experiment—or the liberal values that undergird it.

Although the possibility for national unity seems distant absent a great national tragedy, a political party or leader once again grounded in liberalism’s core commitment to human freedom in all its forms could offer voters a hopeful vision of their future—one that is connected to their deepest held beliefs about what it means to be an American and to their tangible economic needs in increasingly uncertain times.

TLP has proposed a “pro-worker, pro-family, pro-America” framework for renewed liberalism from the center-left:

A new center would place America’s workers and their families at the forefront of public consideration. A country is only as good as the strength and stability of its people. So all Americans need solid jobs with good wages or salaries—and adequate health, retirement, and leave benefits—to be financially secure and in a position to enjoy their lives and raise their children without constant stress and worry about money or safety.

Creating well-paid jobs for workers first requires successful and growing businesses, both small and large. Although private employers and investors drive most of this action, the government plays a vital role in spearheading investments into the sources and sectors of good jobs in fields such as health care, education, technology, infrastructure, and clean energy, along with financing for scientific research and development that can fuel future economic innovation.

Economic growth is essential to a pro-worker and pro-family centrist movement. Without growth, the country lacks the resources and economic opportunities necessary to pay workers more and fund important social welfare policies to help fight poverty, prop up low-wage employment, and extend health care and education to all people. Economic growth also drives wealth-building and family security through expanded access to homeownership and investments that fund college educations for young people and retirements for older ones. A strong, democratic voice for workers and their families, through unions or other organizations, is also essential for making sure the nation’s economic wealth is shared fairly with the workers who help produce and consume our national output.

Likewise, America’s foreign policies need to back up and advance our pro-worker, pro-family domestic policies. Here again the government plays a critical role by protecting jobs for American workers, making investments in domestic manufacturing and technology to bolster our position versus China, and brokering better deals with trading partners so we can send goods and services to them—and they can send theirs to us in return—in a fair and mutually beneficial manner.

If we want to build this common focus on national economic development to strengthen America’s workers and families, our politics must stop focusing on interminable, annoying, and unresolvable cultural battles between people. Americans are a truly diverse lot—in background, outlook, and values—and we do best when we respect these differences and let people live their lives the way they want without being told what to think, what to say, or how to structure their private lives.

A new centrism therefore needs to be universal in outlook, with a commitment to equal dignity and rights for all people, and pluralist in practice by protecting individual rights, free speech, and divergent values across different communities.

This is just one framework. There are other worthy ideas for renewed liberalism on the Democratic side from the “abundance” (a liberalism that builds) and “anti-monopoly” (a liberalism of fairness and open competition) factions that are complementary. Republican liberals, although small in number at this point, are likewise taking their own stab at renewal by stressing the private sector foundations of a solid market economy and the benefits of free trade as an alternative to the chaotic protectionism and corporatism of the current administration. Whether these liberal ideas from the center-left and center-right can compete with emerging illiberal and populist ones—and actually win elections and build a majority—remains to be seen.

The hour may be late for American liberalism, but it’s not dead yet.