Abstract
The often-neglected irony of Louis Hartz's account of The Liberal Tradition in America (1955) was that there was, in fact, no liberal tradition in America because the existence of a liberal tradition presupposed competing ideologies. And, as Hartz explicitly noted, he was not referring to any actual historical tradition. “Liberalism” was an analytical construct encompassing a variety of values and tendencies that Hartz believed had characterized American society and had sprung from America's exceptional nonfeudal past. Although Hartz, at times, seemed to reify the “liberal tradition,” it was the subsequent literature that, in various defenses and critiques, treated liberalism as an actual historical tradition, extending at least from John Locke to the present. It was that literature that spawned now-exhausted debates such as the one about whether the American founding was based on liberal or republican principles. There is, however, a historically specifiable liberal tradition in American political discourse that began with the ascendancy of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his capture and elaboration of the title and that spawned a philosophical counterpart manifest in the work of individuals such as John Dewey. Before that point, “liberal” and “liberalism” had little distinct meaning either in American politics or scholarly commentary. One of the virtues of the essays comprising Liberalism for a New Century is that, for the most part, the volume deals with the actual liberal political tradition in the United States rather than with the abstraction conjured up by academicians.
Published Version
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