Type a new keyword(s) and press Enter to search

Liberal Consensus

 

            FORGING THE POST-WWII LIBERAL CONSENSUS #1.
             Institutional Compromise: Welfare-Warfare State .
             New Deal Liberalism + Military Industrial Complex ("Guns and Butter-).
             .
             Creating a Government based on "Civilian-Militarism- (from the dollar-a-year men to the revolving door between defense-based industrialism and government service). (Take Secretaries of Defense as an example: Charles Wilson (1953-1957), former President of GM, Neil McElroy (1957-1959), former President of Proctor and Gamble, Robert McNamara (1961-1967), former President of Ford Motor Company, Caspar Weinberger (1981-1987), former VP of Bechtel Corporation). By 1957 200 Generals and Admirals and 1300 colonels or naval officers of similar rank worked for civilian agencies.
             .
             Defense spending linked to moderate expansions of welfare-state at home based upon the imperatives of fighting the Cold War abroad. "Military Keynesianism- in which major producers of consumer durables were also major weapons contractors: "what enhanced the home was not unrelated to what protected the homeland.
             .
             Examples: GI Bill, NSC '68 (see excerpts on web-page), Federal Highway Act of 1956, Truman's "Fair Deal,"" Kennedy's "New Frontier,"" Johnson's "Great Society-.
             FORGING THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS #2.
             Ideological Underpinnings: Anticommunist Liberalism.
             Purging the remnants of the New Deal Left (Prosecuting Communist Party members, 1948 defeat of Henry Wallace's Progressive Party, Government loyalty oaths, Purging Left-Wing Trade Unions, Hollywood Black-list).
             Containing Right-wing Anticommunism (McCarthy's Censure by the Senate in 1954, Preventing "Rollback,"" Firing of Douglas Macarthur by Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson's defeat of Barry Goldwater 1964).
             Preserving Nuclear Peace through Mutually Assured Destruction and Containment. Blocking "Soviet expansionism- short of war. Increasing emphasis upon covert operations, brushfire and proxy wars fought out in global peripheries and rim lands of Asia, Africa and Latin America.


Essays Related to Liberal Consensus