The new liberalism

Ideology-free politics may be the wave of the future | Gene Edward Veith

With conservatives in disarray and floundering for leadership, the pendulum may be swinging back to liberalism. But liberalism today is different from that of its glory days in American politics, the era from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal to Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society.

The old liberals believed in an activist government, one that rights society's wrongs, controls the economy, and rights the wrongs of other societies overseas. They waged wars against poverty. They regulated business and tried to tax and spend their way out of economic downturns. They also waged wars against communism.

The new liberals also believe in an activist domestic government, but they are more open to free market economics than their Keynesian forebears. They do want America to right the wrongs of other countries, but a large and influential faction is essentially pacifist when it comes to waging war.