Since we covered ideology and federalism recently and will start looking at political parties soon enough, this gives us an opportunity to discuss this transitional period in history. With his death, we are sloso given the chance to speculate further on what factors lead to changes in public policy. Often it has less to do with people changing opinions on certain matter, but instead generations with shared opinions replacing generations with others.
Some related readings - If you are inclined:
- Frank Lautenber, the last of the New Deal Liberals.
- Wikipedia: Liberalism in the United States.
- Wikipedia: New Deal
I'd recommend this one especially:
- How classical liberalism morphed into New Deal liberalism.
I like its introductory paragraph. 2305s should especially recognize the point the author is making here:
Classical liberalism is synonymous with a faith in reason, which had arisen out of the Enlightenment as a reaction to claims of divine rule by the clergy and royalty of the late Middle Ages. It found expression in the thoughts of many writers across Europe and the British Isles, including John Stuart Mill, John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, Voltaire, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, as well as in the political arguments of America’s founders, particularly Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and James Madison. Liberal freedoms were primarily freedoms of the mind: freedom of thought, of expression, of religion, and of self-invention without regard to the customs of caste, creed, or crown. Above all, liberalism implied both an ability and a responsibility of people to think for themselves, to create their own destinies, and to follow their own consciences. Examining the evolution of liberal belief since its founding, the liberal theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed in an article published on July 4, 1955, in The New Republic, that liberalism in the broadest sense was characterized by a commitment “to free the individual from the traditional restraints of a society, to endow the ‘governed’ with the power of the franchise, to establish the principle of the ‘consent of the governed’ as the basis of political society; to challenge all hereditary privileges and traditional restraints upon human initiative.”
