My postings on “old liberals” versus “new liberals” over the last couple of days seem to have struck a chord—at least if my overflowing inbox represents an indication. From one reader:

“I’ve been thinking about this subject; in the last couple of years I’ve read most of the WPA Writers’ Project guidebooks, which were written by pure New Dealers. Highly refreshing in a modern context. They never missed a chance to advocate government intervention, but they were not prissy about words, and they had never heard of moral equivalence. Those New Deal writers often and strongly distinguished the”deserving poor” from “bums, drunks and dopefiends”, and accurately diagnosed the different problems of poor blacks and poor whites. Not even a conservative [dares to] make those distinctions nowadays.”

And from another:

“One of the best of the old liberals, Alexander Bickel, died far too young (he was in his early 50s). He was a Yale law professor, supporter of RFK, contributor to The New Republic, and a friend of Anthony Lewis. Here is a quote from his last book “The Morality of Consent” (1975):

“‘The lesson of the great decisions of the Supreme Court and the lesson of contemporary history have been the same for at least a generation: discrimination on the basis of race is illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, inherently wrong, and destructive of democratic society. Now this is to be unlearned and we are told that this is not a matter of fundamental principle but only a matter of whose ox is gored. Those for whom racial equality was demanded are to be more equal than others. Having found support in the Constitution for equality, they now claim support for inequality under the same Constitution.’”

A third reader writes to argue (effectively, I think) that in naming Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. as an “old liberal,” I was being much too kind:

“Since as far back as the sixties Schlessinger has retreated from his once stout anti-Communism. In his recent memoir, Innocent Beginnings he goes so far as to deny that American Communists ever had any insidious effect on the country and defends Mary McCarthy from criticisms of her political idiocy levelled by Sidney Hook. (Remember that her book, Hanoi, contains this sentence: ‘This is a moral, ascetic government, concerned above all with the quality of Vietnamese life.’)”

All of which suggests that “old liberalism” means something—that there really was a time when liberalism remained untainted by political correctness and identity politics—and that “old liberalism” continues to command wide respect. If I were a Democrat, I’d sure be trying to figure out how to claw my way back to “old liberalism.”