What Was Liberalism's Finest Hour In The Twentieth Century?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Poll question: What Was Liberalism's Finest Hour In The Twentieth Century?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

1. Feel Free To Add More....

I couldn't come up with any...


but providing equal rights and a level of economic security for all is a good start...

[itzamirakul]

4. Civil rights, civil rights, civil rights...

says it all for me

[carolinayellowdog]

2. The Marshall Plan n/t

[BillZBubb]

3. There are so many good responses.

It's hard to single out one as the finest. There have been significant advances in government protections, the environment, labor rights, civil rights, voting rights, education, and economic security.

If pressed, I'd say the civil rights gains may be the winner. Passage of Social Security and Medicare are right up there. The whole New Deal too.

[IndianaGreen]

5. Defeating Fascism In WW2

Conservatives of both major parties liked Hitler!

[AntiCoup2K4]

6. It's only too bad Prescott & George Bush Sr didn't join Hitler in Hell

...before Poppy ever conceived any of his demonspawn.

[IndianaGreen]

8. Joe Kennedy Sr. supported Hitler too!

As did Walt Disney and William Randolph Hearst. The list of Americans sympathetic to Hitler before Pearl Harbor was very long indeed!

One reason why we should not hold children responsible for the crimes of their fathers is that Joe Kennedy Jr and Jack Kennedy willingly went to war against the same Fascists their father had supported.

[punpirate]

7. Hmm...

... the suggested answers are very national in orientation. I would say that the rise of democratic socialism in post-WWII Europe has been the most positive turn of events for liberalism. More has been done there to ensure an effective social safety net and at the same time to develop economically than perhaps anywhere else in the world, and in a shorter period of time.

By contrast, post-WWII United States has become steadily less liberal and has become an empire-building national security state which has chosen to wage a succession of small wars, both military and economic, against the rest of the world.

Almost from the inception of the New Deal, the right has been trying to destroy it, and, as of now, they're winning that battle. In fact, liberalism in the US in the 20th century has had but fleeting influence as a body of political thought, with most of that influence concentrated in the most economically turbulent times of the past century.

Most of what we consider politically liberal was accomplished in this country between 1922 and and 1938. Even the Great Society programs of the middle-`60s, historically, had to be tempered by the "liberal" party's unfortunate tendency to wage foreign wars to no good purpose.

The right's current hatred of "Old Europe" is not because that continent is outmoded and archaic in its methods. It is precisely because it is a model of liberalism and has prospered because of that model.

[rfkrfk]

9. The October Revolution ... n/t

[saltpoint]

10. One of the best posts on DU in ages.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall symbolized for me the final defeat of the era of Hitler / Stalin / etc., and gave so many people back their lives with each other after long years' separation and absence.

All of your choices on the poll were very, very good ones.

[gottaB]

11. Establishing the UN, Nuremberg trials, human rights law

The establishment of laws and bodies to acknowledge and protect international human rights obviously grew out of the defeat of fascism, but not necessarily so.