Cold War Liberalism

Truman and the End of Reform

Cold War Liberalism

• Moderate liberal policies and very anticommunist

Taft-Hartley Act weakens the rights of workers to organize and tried to purge communists from unions

The 1948 Election was between Dewey and Truman, Truman won with a small margin

• Democratic party begins to split into progressive, centrists, and dixiecrats
• Democrats were forced to take a stand against communism

Fair Deal (aka the New New Deal)

• Higher minimum wage, social security, and established NHA

Red Scare: The Hunt for Communists

• Communists in the US government were mainly during FDR’s presidency
• Loyalty Security Program let government fire any federal worker they thought was “unfit”
• HUAC - House Un-American Activities Committee, holds public hearings on suspected communists
• Blacklisted workers that refused to testify or were suspected of communist sympathies
• Hollywood Ten - 10 Hollywood workers that were jailed because they refused to testify

McCarthyism

• Wheeling speech = 200 names of communists in the government
• McCarthy wages a smear campaign against critics
• Julius and Ethel Rosenburg executed
• Army-McCarthy Hearings take down McCarthy because he looks like a bully on TV

The Politics of Cold War Liberalism

The 1952 Election is between Eisenhower and Taft, Eisenhower wins

• Eisenhower was moderate, supported the Marshall Plan and NATO

• Taft was conservative (Taft from Taft-Hartley)

• Stalin dies and Khrushchev replaces him

• New Look uses nukes over conventional forces

• Eisenhower tries to limit the cost of containment

1956 Election - Eisenhower defeats Stevenson