2.1.3.1 Pre-WWII Cycles of American Political Thought
The main resource I'm using for the longterm history of American political thought is Kobylka, Joseph F. (2006) Cycles of American Political Thought (Audio or Video with Course Guidebook). Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company. 5.7 (Click on the title to go to my review, and go to Section 9. Glossary for more information about the Teaching Company.)
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Kobyika says "Born of English parents and developed in changing and increasingly heterogenous contexts, American political thought has cycled around an essentially liberal core for nearly 400 years." One of the distinctive helpful use of terms throughout this course is his consistent use of the term "liberal" to refer to the originating ideas of the founders anchored in the philosophy of John Locke--individualism, natural rights, consent, and limited government (not the common meaning of the word today). For him, "The American political tradition is rife with nuance and difference. By looking at it closely, we will see that it is defined by cycles in which different kinds of liberals accommodate challenges by changing contexts and non-liberal thinkers." (pp.1,3 Course Guidebook)
Kobyika employs the terms "minimal state liberalism" and "active state liberalism" to describe the two basic types of American political philosophy that have been the major players in "the dynamic malleability of liberalism" from the beginning. Another key concept is that "rather than one 'founding,' America has experienced at least three 'reconstitutions.'" (5,7) He views America as a once-constituted country (1776 & 1777-78, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) that was reconstituted at least three times in 1828 (Andrew Jackson), 1860 (Abraham Lincoln) and 1932 (F.D.R.); one can also see minor reconstitutions in 1800 (Thomas Jefferson) and 1876 (Reconstruction). His chapter-by-chapter use of these key concepts provides us with a solid grasp of the broadest layer of historical context for the present crisis.
Kobyika's course ends with Ronald Reagan and the possibility that he represented a fourth major reconstitution. For me, the extended Reagan Era from 1980-2008 is a minimal state reconstitution, and many see the Obama two-term presidency as a possible fifth major, active state reconstitution. If so, that goes a long way toward explaining why there is such desperate attempt to block it by the far-right.
Kobyika employs the terms "minimal state liberalism" and "active state liberalism" to describe the two basic types of American political philosophy that have been the major players in "the dynamic malleability of liberalism" from the beginning. Another key concept is that "rather than one 'founding,' America has experienced at least three 'reconstitutions.'" (5,7) He views America as a once-constituted country (1776 & 1777-78, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) that was reconstituted at least three times in 1828 (Andrew Jackson), 1860 (Abraham Lincoln) and 1932 (F.D.R.); one can also see minor reconstitutions in 1800 (Thomas Jefferson) and 1876 (Reconstruction). His chapter-by-chapter use of these key concepts provides us with a solid grasp of the broadest layer of historical context for the present crisis.
Kobyika's course ends with Ronald Reagan and the possibility that he represented a fourth major reconstitution. For me, the extended Reagan Era from 1980-2008 is a minimal state reconstitution, and many see the Obama two-term presidency as a possible fifth major, active state reconstitution. If so, that goes a long way toward explaining why there is such desperate attempt to block it by the far-right.
I want to highlight three key active-state liberal presidents that are important for President Obama's self-understanding.
In Kobyika's chapter on Abraham Lincoln he says that while most consider Lincoln one of our greatest presidents, not many have seen that "he forged the beginnings of active state liberalism. In the words of intellectual historian Garry Wills, Lincoln 'reconstituted' America." At Gettysburg, "he appealed to the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, as the cornerstone of American self-goverance. A nation 'conceived in liberty' was transformed into one 'dedicated to the proposition that all men are equal.'" For Lincoln, Kobyika says, "freedom does not simply exist...It must rest on equality...(and) one agent for the realization of equality and, through it, freedom is affirmative governmental action. Government was not the enemy of freedom, tyrannical government was." Lincoln "left the beginnings of a new understanding of liberalism." (109-10,113)
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In Kobyika's chapter on Theodore Roosevelt he says TR "became a signal player in executing an expansion of governmental power." He was "a progressive heir to Lincoln's underdeveloped notion of the state...Never backing away from the political individualism at the core of liberalism, Roosevelt advocated an activist national government to protect the interest of the people form predatory practices of private economic power...Government must guarantee that the 'struggle for human betterment' is fair. It must regulate an redistribute wealth to create 'practical equality of opportunity." TR became an advocate for "a third way"-- a new nationalism that stood over against the extremes of those who sought "solely to protect private property without concern for inequalities...(and those who were) solely concerned with equalizing distribution of property." Kobyika humorously sums all this up by saying that TR was "Lincoln on steroids." He also points out that TR revived "a concept largely absent from through(?) since the founding: virtue." |
In Kobyika's chapter on Franklin Roosevelt he says that FDR's "New Deal was born at the intersection of progressive stirrings and the Great Depression...(TR) may have laid the groundwork for the liberal regulatory state but the Great Depression provided the impetus for Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) to build it." The key to his governing style, "and to the development of his active liberalism, was uttered in his first inaugural address: 'The only thing we have to fear...is fear itself.'" Roosevelt's progressive liberalism was popular with the people, but the Supreme Court initially greeted it with hostility, striking down several pieces of New Deal legislation. But when "the Court backed down in 1937, welfare-state liberalism was institutionalized and the cycle of political thought cam firmly back around to its activist strand." Later in his presidency FDR put forth an unique and sweeping Economic Bill of Rights, which he never got a chance due to his death to promote. Many progressives hold it up today as a model for the type of reforms necessary for us to deal with our present obscene inequality, levels not seen since the Glided Age at the end of the 19th century that TR had to deal with. |
Political thought since the end of WWII has been a tussle between minimal state liberalism and active state liberalism--what today we call "conservatism" and "liberalism," respectively. (Politically this leads us to layers II and III, below. But first a brief look at longterm religious history.)
(under construction)
(under construction)
My involvement 2004 especially and retirement
Outline of this section - matrix (not context - Crossan video)
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