How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

by Heather Cox Richardson

In the 1950s, politicians and commentators agreed that those commonsense American ideas had produced a “liberal consensus,” shared by most Democrats and Republicans alike. The government should regulate business, provide for basic social welfare, and promote infrastructure: the New Deal had finally achieved the government that best reflected democratic values. In this worldview, Americans stood firmly between leftist revolution on one side and right-wing reaction on the other. “Liberalism,” the influential literary critic Lionel Trilling wrote, “is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition . . . there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in circulation.”