Hossain 1

Sakel Hossain
Liberalism: A Passing Phenomenon
In the essay “Liberalism: A Passing Phenomenon”, the main argument H.W. Brands

portrays is that liberalism has succeeded in US history when the country is under the shadow of

national security threat such as war; but the demise of liberalism began with the loss of public

confidence in the means of govt. According to Brands Liberalism is a belief that the role of

government is not only to protect the life, liberty and prosperity of people; but also take initiative

to create programs that will improve the lives of American people. Brands uses the Cold war as

the main point to explain the demise of liberalism in US. Brands asserts that since colonial time,

American people always maintained a distrust toward the government and resisted the extension

of government power. But during the cold war when the American people thought that the country

needed a national leader to protect America and its dominance around the world, then the public

began to put their faith in government’s effort to protect the national security and world peace; as

it states in the essay “the cold war fostered a mindset that caused Americans to put aside their trust

of big government and allow the public sector to grow”. But when the US failed in Vietnam, public

distrust toward the government increased because Vietnam War revealed the lack of judgement

and decision making on the part of politicians in US. People felt that they had been deceived by

the government from the beginning of the Cold War as it indicates in the essay “Vietnam begot

Watergate, which begot investigation that revealed that the deception hadn’t started with Nixon

but ran back to the origin of the cold war”. The extinction of liberalism led to the American

politician such as Ronald Reagan to conform to neo-conservatism to regain the trust of American

people. Finally, Brands believe that liberalism in American went extinct because it was not able to

understand the nature of American people, promised more than it could offer and believe that

liberalism was a product of Cold War which could not last when the cold war ended.
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Evangelical Conservatism: A New Phenomenon

In the essay “Evangelical Conservatism: A New Phenomenon” the author Paul Boyer

discusses the rise of the evangelical conservatism and the role of the movement in the politics of

the United States. Evangelical conservatism refers to the set of organizations that developed

because of the social upheaval, radical politics and economic decline in the late 1960s and early

1970s. Before the 1970s evangelical focus was to mobilize their followers, increase the number of

denominations and avoid politics, but after the WWII evangelical leaders began to involve

themselves into politics with their support for Washington’s Cold War foreign policy, to build a

stronger army to combat Communism and to battle home front secularisms. Boyer contends that

evangelical leaders made a great use of their organizational technique, communication

technologies and marketing technique such as media, movie, television, radio to appeal to broader

audience and spread their message; as it states in the essay “Media and marketing savvy, in short

fueled evangelicalism’s post 1970 resurgence”. Boyer also contends that “Addressing the spiritual

and emotional needs of Americans rattled by Vietnam, the upheavals of the 1960s and multiplying

challenges to traditional mores-exacerbated by inflation and oil stocks—evangelicalism grew

exponentially”. This shows that the evangelical leaders used the public discontent with the social,

political issues such as abortion, drug use, education, sexuality, the nature of the family and the

growing differences between the religious and irreligious to promote their message and take

evangelicalism to the next level. At the end of 1970, when the evangelical began started to voice

their opinion on political issues then the political leaders started to work with evangelical leaders

and use their popularism to be successful in their political agenda as President Ronald Reagan

states in a religious briefing “This is a nonpartisan gathering and so I know you cannot endorse

me, but I …. want you to know that I endorse you and what you are doing”. All in all, Boyer asserts

that the organizing skills of the evangelical leaders along with the use of media and technologies,
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the social and political issues in 1970s, led to the emergence of evangelical conservatism which

came to dominate American politics over a long period of time.