Retooled Liberalism? A Review Article

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Reagan presidency and the Persian Gulf war, we appear once again to be entering into one of the spasms of national selfinspection to which America is periodically subjected. Understanding the trajectory of the past, it is argued, can help determine the future politics of an ongoing experiment in democratic self-government, but two factors militate against a firm sense of purpose or direction. The state of moral discourse makes forecasting a complicated enterprise, for definitions of the good society can no longer implicitly rely upon common sense, shared beliefs, or acknowledged religious authority. In addition, diffuse and complex moder economies require a degree of expertise in their direction that limits the practical role of lay citizens. American democracy, in short, cannot yet translate plural moral languages or reconcile participation with efficiency. In the analysis of twentieth-century American liberalism, the ideological matrix within which this conundrum presents itself, scholars have recently begun to reconsider arguments first made in the 1940s and 1950s. At that time, such writers as Morton White, Cushing Strout, and Bernard Crick linked America's reverence for technical achievement to its political codes.2 As a parade of new research methodologies, political constituencies, and cultural enthusiasms queued up in the following decades, the focus within American history upon the multifold expressions of technological fascination