Free Republic

In an address in North Carolina, FDR said: In those days, 1913 and 1914, the leadership of the Nation was in the hands of a great President who was seeking to recover for our social system ground that had been lost under his conservative predecessor, and to restore something of the fighting liberal spirit which the Nation had gained under Theodore Roosevelt. It seemed one of our great national tragedies that just when Woodrow Wilson was beginning to accomplish definite improvements in the living standards of America, the World War not only interrupted his course, but laid the foundation for...

When the Term “Liberalism” ChangedA great transformation of the meaning of liberalism in this country manifested itself with the election of Franklin Roosevelt to the Presidency in 1932. Instead of emphasizing individual freedom and (concomitant) limited Constitutional government, the term now referred instead to a doctrine of ever-expanding government control over the economy, including higher taxes and more regulations. (This transformation of the term’s meaning was discussed by the legal historian Ronald Rotunda in a 1968 essay titled "The Liberal Label: Roosevelt's Capture of a Symbol.”) During the 1932 campaign, incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover – hardly an advocate of...