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European liberals have viewed themselves as the avatars of the rational individual as opposed to the mob or tyrant. Faced with the populist, democratic, and egalitarian character of US society, American liberals could not take this point of view for granted. For that reason, they turned to Freud, although with mixed success. I explore this turn in three consecutive moments: the New Deal, when liberals first understood America to be not only a class society, but a mass society; Richard Hofstadter's theory of paranoia, which he applied to the right-wing born with McCarthyism; and the New Left and feminist attempts to remake liberalism into a more democratic and multicultural creed. In all three cases, I argue that the liberal commitment to capitalist property relations and the market limited its ability to advance a more robust and democratic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article demonstrates that the 1950s marked the ideological origins of rapprochement in which a group of China-watching intellectuals revised the outlook of the U.S. Democratic Party on China. Topics discussed include the role played by Harvard professor John Fairbank in pushing for a U.S.-China rapprochement, the impact of McCarthyism on the efforts to establish harmonious relations between the two countries, and how Chinese communism posed a difficult problem for Democrats by exposing cracks in their Cold War liberalism.

The life and legacy of Irving Howe are significant not only because they represent the intellectual biography of a leading American literary-political figure of the twentieth-century, nor merely illuminate the historical period in which he wrote. Rather, they also bear relevance to the state of America in our own time, one in which our ideological polarization has reached extremes. This essay discusses the pertinence of Howe's achievement for the present-day political situation, especially for the possibility that his work could contribute toward the revival of Left-liberalism in America. Just as Howe's political innocence was tested and matured into more nuanced understanding and deepened ambivalence, so might his mature work and example inspire a new generation of liberals to move beyond idealism and find a sober mix that balances principle and pragmatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reminds us that the most effective anticommunist measures after the Second World War were neither irrational nor conservative, but rather rational and carried out by liberals. It argues that anticommunism did not curtail the New Deal, as is still commonly assumed, but rather strengthened and expanded it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aaron Copland's "The Tender Land" (1954) and Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" (1956) both comment sharply on McCarthyism, but their broader political implications are less clear. While the story of each may be read in terms of postwar liberalism, a position itself informed by anti-communist ideology, two crucial ensembles reflect a decidedly leftist perspective. "The Promise of Living,&" which ends act 1 of The Tender Land, and "Make Our Garden Grow," the finale of "Candide," celebrate a grand, utopian ideal—the politically outmoded, progessive ideal of community as a collective forged through common experience and shared labor—in musical terms that evoke the era of the Popular Front. Despite their similarities, however, "The Promise of Living" and "Make Our Garden Grow" arrive at structurally distinct points in their perspective works and announce different dramatic as well as political ends. Ultimately one community comes together while the other falls apart, and these divergent trajectories speak to the experiences of the composers themselves as representatives of separate political generations. Using achival research, cultural history, and music analysis, I argue that at these moments "The Tender Land" and "Candide" reject the conservative and liberal anticommunism of their mutual Cold War context to remember or imagine the possibilities of a vital Left. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the life and career of Joseph Brown Matthews and an overview of the role of the counter-subversives during the McCarthy era. Matthews was born in Kentucky and graduated at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky, where he was encouraged to undertake the task of Christianizing the world. Matthews and the counter-subversive community contributed mightily to the rise of Joe McCarthy and the defeat of many liberals.

Focuses on the reassessment of Cold War liberals. Relationship between communism and McCarthyism; Factors that contributed to the general perception of a Communist threat; Goals of the Broyles Bills; Reasons behind the formation of the Security Office of the University of Illinois in Chicago; Procedures in tracing subversive persons and groups.

The article provides information on the "Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy," published quarterly by the Independent Institute. The journal is dedicated to advancing the understanding of the multifaceted reality to which the term political economy refers. The Spring 1996 issue contains five papers that examine what is living and what is dead in classical liberalism; the regulation of carcinogens and whether animal tests are a sound foundation; the end of welfare and the contradiction of compassion; the international monetary system in retrospect; and culture, politics, and McCarthyism.