Ebook: The Great Flip: The Shifting Views of Liberals and Conservatives on Active Government

On January 6, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced his Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Roosevelt's call for the Four Freedoms was in part a response to the totalitarian governments then on the march in the world, especially Hitler's Germany and imperial Japan. But they were an important announcement about the United States as well.

The first two, freedom of speech and religion, were not controversial, as they were rooted deeply in American values since the founding. But after the onset of the Great Depression, FDR and the Democratic Party placed freedom from want and fear as core values of the American experiment, with government playing a leading role in alleviating such conditions. This was controversial at the time, with conservatives opposed to such a role for government.

This dichotomy is familiar to us today, with liberals supporting an active role...