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Store: An Independent Institute Book
THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN LIBERALISM
By
Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.
Foreword by
Robert Higgs
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In The Decline of American Liberalism, renowned historian Arthur Ekirch chronicles the powerful and moving story of individual liberty across three centuries of American history. Contrary to the conventional view that this de-humanization, immense expansion and centralization of government power, and decline in liberty are temporary or manifest some sort of “progress,” Ekirch believes that this change—“though hardly perceptible, often uneven, and occasionally reversed, is nevertheless a real descent.”
Readers across the political spectrum will be fascinated by this widely celebrated and beautifully written book, as Ekirch traces how the ideals of individual liberty, free markets, and self-government have weathered the Revolutionary War, Civil War, two World Wars, Great Depression, and civil rights battles. The book’s far-reaching discussion of the growth of government and its negative effects on the economy, peace, and the rule of law is highly illuminating for modern readers who currently face unprecedented expansions of the size and reach of State power.
Detailed Summary |
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Table of Contents
Foreword to the 2009 Edition by Robert Higgs
Preface to the 1966 Edition by Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.
Preface to the First Edition by Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.
Acknowledgments
1. The European Experience
2. The Hope of America
3. A Revolutionary Shift in Emphasis
4. Federalist Centralization and Consolidation
5. Jeffersonian Compromise
6. Jacksonian Democracy: The Many and the Few
7. The Curse of Slavery
8. An American Tragedy
9. New Nationalism and New South
10. Pre-emption, Exploitation, Progress
11. The Progressives as Nationalists
12. America Enters the Struggle for Power
13. Harsh Reaction and Bitter Disillusionment
14. The Cult of Conformity and Prosperity
15. The Cult of Planning and Reform
16. From New Deal to New War
17. National Security and the Garrison State
18. National Loyalty and the Police State
Notes
Index
About the Author
Praise for The Decline of American Liberalism “ . . . Mr. Ekirch has read widely and deeply in the history of the United States. America, in Mr. Ekirch’s view, began in the ‘liberal’ tradition of western civilization. This liberalism was in part a doctrine—the freedom of the individual. But in addition to being a doctrine it was a habit of mind, a tendency toward the reasonable, the tolerant, and the moderate. Since the American Revolution the story of the United States has been one of the steady decline of this liberalism. In recent times the welfare state and the military state have pushed political, economic, and ideological centralization to a point where ‘all the major values of the American liberal tradition’ are gravely menaced. . . . Mr. Ekirch systemically applies his thesis to each period in American history. . . .”
—Saturday Review
“Ekirch argues in The Decline of American Liberalism that the main trend since the American Revolution has been to augment concentration of economic and state power and thus whittle away individual freedom. Mr. Ekirch admits that the decline of the liberal tradition has been paralleled by the advance of other philosophies and values—but his sustained argument pulls few punches in its well-written, hard-hitting pages. Professor Ekirch has written an intelligent and important book. That such a book could be written and published proves that liberalism in America can still be thoughtfully interpreted and eloquently championed.”
—Merle E. Curti, Pulitzer Prizewinner; Professor of History, University of Wisconsin (in the New York Times)
“Brilliant, penetrating and often illuminating study of American political history. . . .”
—The New Republic
“The New Deal and its successors substituted the ideals of security and equality for freedom and diversity. It is a formidable indictment, and Mr. Ekirch marshals a large body of evidence for it—enough to make his book stimulating and rewarding reading.”
—The Economist
“To most people the term ‘liberalism’ is confusing. Some people equate it with the New Deal, others with any kind of leftist philosophy. In this powerful and brilliant book, Arthur Ekirch uses the term in the only way it can be properly used—in its historical and classical sense—not as a program, nor even as a well-defined system, but more as an attitude of mind. . . . Everyone who respects the worth and dignity of individual human beings and dislikes totalitarianism can read this distinguished book with profit.”
—Dumas Malone, Pulitzer Prize Winner; Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Biographer-in-Residence and Professor Emeritus of History, University of Virginia (in the History Book Club Review)
“Taking as his standpoint the classical conception of liberalism as an attitude and including belief in limited representative government and economic freedom for the individual, Arthur Ekirch traces its decline from the beginning of our national history. . . . Professor Ekirch has contributed a stimulating interpretation and survey of American development. His chapters on the growth of the garrison state and the cult of national loyalty are a devastating commentary which has the virtue of relating these development to long term trends in this society.”
—The Nation
“The Decline of American Liberalism is an extremely interesting, thoughtful, and valuable book. It is one of the most stimulating surveys of American history that I have seen in years.”
—Allan Nevins, Pulitzer Prizewinner; Harmsworth Professor of American History, Oxford University
“Arthur Ekirch’s The Decline of American Liberalism is gloomier about liberalism and more loyal to the original (i.e. libertarian) understanding of it. Rather than celebrate the rise of reform, he laments its contribution to the decline of individualism.
—Jonah Goldberg, Editor at Large, National Review Online
“With its brilliant emphasis on ongoing, never-ending battles between forces of centralization and decentralization since our colonial days, The Decline of American Liberalism provides the key to fully understanding not only our country’s past but its present and future too.”
—Nick Gillespie, Editor, Reason Online and Reason TV
“Although originally published in 1955 and much engaged with the Cold War’s chilling effects on civil liberties, Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.’s provocative The Decline of American Liberalism has perhaps never been more relevant. By stressing that, from the very start of American history, forces of centralized and decentralized power have been warring over the country, Ekirch makes a case for limited government and individual rights in a way that is extremely well-suited to the twilight years of the ‘American Century.’”
—American Enterprise
“For [Ekirch], liberalism means the emergence of man over the State; it conveys a sense of the dignity and self-determination of the individual. The intellectuals of the present time have pre-empted the word ‘liberalism’ and corrupted it to mean the use of the State’s power to accomplish ‘social ends.’ But as this book makes clear, the true liberal—whether he calls himself a conservative, a libertarian, or an individualist—is the man who sets his heart and mind on the eternal but elusive goal of liberty.”
—Sheldon Richmond, Editor, The Freeman
“In the fifties, at the peak of another similar era of liberal evisceration (in the face of McCarthyite conformism and national security fears), Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr., in The Decline of American Liberalism, offered a cogent analysis of liberalism having been in perpetual retreat since soon after the American Revolution. . . . Thus the illusion that freedom is on the march (it is, if one takes as the criteria the tentacles of the regulatory state, which has over time shed the distinction between the public and the private), even as it is really in secular decline (if measured by the scope of an individual to lead a life of his own choice, free from interference).”
—Contemporary Review
“In order to understand and evaluate Professor Ekirch’s interpretation of the fate of liberalism, one must first understand the meaning he attached to the term. . . . Liberalism is best thought of ‘not as a well-defined political or economic system, but as a collection of ideas or principles which go to make up an attitude or ‘habit of mind.’ It must include ‘the concept of limited representative government and the widest possible freedom of the individual—both intellectually and economically.’”
—American Political Science Review
“. . . . American liberalism derives mainly from the ideas of the Enlightenment and was institutionalized during the Revolution; and from this [Ekirch] reasons, again with force, to an anti-statist and anti-militarist tradition in America
. . . . Possibly, and I would say we may hope, the perspective of some happier future and the writing of some very large and persuasive book may give Ekirch’s convictions a new historical standing.”
—American Quarterly
“This book is well worth studying if for no other reason than the light it sheds on the confusion attending the term liberal. Moreover, some readers will find useful the author’s pessimistic portrait of decay (often long quotes from well-known textbooks) in recalling once again how frequently the ideals of the democratic state have been violated in our national past.”
—Journal of Southern History
“Professor Ekirch has written a short history of the United States from the hopeful eve of the revolution to the frustrating morrow of World War II, and, to tell the truth and give him his due, he has managed to write one quite different from almost all other short histories of the United States. . . . This, it need hardly be said, is a very subjective kind of history—even though written with a fine show of cool, dispassionate objectivity—and every reader will have to make up his own mind on the viability if the main thesis. . . . Professor Ekirch proves himself an able, learned historian, and no one will fail to profit from a careful reading of this book. . . . His is a brave attempt.”
—American Historical Review
“In this stimulating book Professor Ekirch undertakes to show that American liberalism has been in steady decline since the founding of our republic. This classical liberalism has as its central doctrines ‘the concept of limited representative government and the widest possible freedom for the individual—both intellectually and economically.’ . . . In the space of a hundred and fifty years, ‘liberalism’ has practically reversed its meaning and is now used to sanction a statism potentially more absolute than anything seen in the past. But that [Ekirch] has given the true history of a decline seems to me indubitable.
—Richard M. Weaver, Professor of English, University of Chicago (in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review)
“He has undertaken to define liberalism ‘rigidly,’ as containing the essence of individualism; and by that measure can find no important deviation from a road of events which, from colonial times to the present, runs downward and away from liberalism, through capitalism (both liberal and monopoly) and through two world wars to the garrison and police States. . . . I assume that it will take all the heritage of our liberals and liberalisms to forge a modern version of liberty capable of doing what older versions once more or less managed. It is good to think that Professor Ekirch’s and social conscience will be of aid in this work.”
—American Journal of Economics and Sociology
“A more thought-provoking ‘de mortuis’ for liberalism is hard to imagine.”
—Louisville Courier Journal
“What distinguishes this book from so many recent discussions of the American political tradition is the obvious sincerity and passion of Arthur Ekirch’s love for individual liberty and hatred for the Leviathan state. On this most important of issues he is uncompromisingly on the side of the angels.”
—Frank S. Meyer, Co-Founding Editor, National Review
“This is a fascinating book in that it is a serious effort by an able and learned historian to prove a thesis with which hardly any fellow practitioner of his craft would agree and the man in the street would hotly dispute. . . . Liberalism to him is a blend of faith and practice designed to insure the maximum freedom to the individual, economic and intellectual, from the power of government, good or bad. The present volume finds four great enemies of American liberalism: war, any and every war; nationalism, including even Lincoln’s defense of the Union or the Fourteenth Amendment; government intervention, ranging from Hamilton’s economic program to Civil Rights proposals; and majoritarian democracy, in which Andrew Jackson and Senator McCarthy are classic examples.”
—New York History
“I disagree with the author’s viewpoint and I believe that he would probably disagree with mine. But the book is a remarkable, scholarly, well-documented record of the history of America’s intellectual life. One may disagree with a writer’s interpretation of the facts, but first one must know the facts—and in this respect, the book is of enormous value. This book is The Decline of American Liberalism by Professor Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.”
—Ayn Rand, author
“How is it possible that one hundred and fifty years ago liberalism meant the advocacy of freedom and economic laissez faire and that today it means the creed of totalitarian statism? Many people are aware of this total reversal. But few, especially today’s liberals, know, or care to know, how or why it came about. In an engrossing book, distinguished for its scholarship, Professor Ekirch provides the evidence for understanding and explaining how two mutually antagonistic creeds share the name of liberalism and how one led to the other. v surveys the rise and demise of liberal ideology and institutions in America.”
—Robert Hessen, Senior Fellow Emeritus, Hoover Institution, Stanford University About the Author Arthur A. Ekirch Jr., Ph.D., (1915-2000) was a leading scholar of American intellectual history and professor emeritus of history at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany. Dr. Ekirch was the author of ten books, including The Civilian and the Military.
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