8.3 How Progressive Change Happens

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

―Martin Luther King Jr.

The most fundamental social change in U.S. history was, without a doubt, ending the crime of slavery. Four-million slaves were freed at the cost of 400,000 Northern lives (about 40,000 of them Black), roughly the same number who died in WWII. The South suffered proportionally more.

This is one of four great fundamental changes that this chapter investigates to find out how progressive change happens—not in any detail but at the most essential level. Were these changes driven by politics based on the radical utopian ethic or the liberal strategic ethic? These are the “two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably opposed” ethics that Max Weber defined in 1918 and that Michael Kazin adopted in American Dreamers to describe the thinking of radicals and liberals.

In other words, according to both Weber and Kazin, this is the most fundamental and enduring divide in political thought.

As Kazin points out, the “governing liberals and progressives appear to be [the] problem-solvers.” But his claim is that the “uncompromising” radicals have ways of pressuring the liberals, who are just “anxious opportunists,” into taking the actions that solve the problem. And how do radicals do this? Specifically, Kazin claims that radicals are 

far better at helping to transform the moral culture, the “common sense” of society—how Americans understand what is just and what is unjust.

Kazin is proposing that even though it always appears that the liberals brought about a fundamental progressive change, it was really the radicals who caused the liberals (who are just “anxious opportunists”) to take action. And without the radicals, the change would never have happened. Moreover, he claims that the controlling force of radicalism works through a slow, long-term transformation of “moral culture” that is difficult to trace.

Kazin’s claim is far subtler than the standard radical claim that a millennial-style revolution is imminent (a very old radical claim). His claim is that radical influence works through cultural (not political) channels, such as books and songs, which come from sources that are hard to evaluate and which have invisible effects. In spite of these ambiguities, by looking at Kazin’s own explanations for the four fundamental changes, we will be able to answer the most essential question about how progressive change happens:

Is fundamental progressive change brought about by following the radical utopian ethic or by following the liberal strategic ethic?

While in all four cases the obvious answer is that those following the liberal strategic ethic caused the change, we will need to check two aspects of Kazin’s story—(1) were the liberals just “anxious opportunists,” and (2) were radicals “far better at helping to transform the moral culture” in a way that led to the progressive change?

The four fundamental changes. Except for the end of slavery and the end of the Jim Crow era, which happened suddenly, almost all change has occurred incrementally—in thousands of tiny steps. When Social Security was passed in 1935, it looked nothing like it does today after myriad amendments. To find out how fundamental social change happens, we’ll look at the two that were sudden and two that were dramatic turning points leading to a long series of incremental changes. These are:

•   Abraham Lincoln’s ending of slavery
•   Teddy Roosevelt’s ending of laissez-faire capitalism
•   Franklin Roosevelt’s launch of federal social spending
•   Kennedy’s and Johnson’s ending of the Jim Crow era

These will provide the clearest lessons in the shortest space. And although these changes happened long ago, the old struggles for change show remarkable similarities to those now polarizing the Democrats and the nation.

The End of Slavery

By all accounts, Lincoln followed the liberal, strategic ethic—he proceeded cautiously, and each step was a compromise designed to increase his chance of success by not risking catastrophic failure. So Kazin is right that Lincoln, who “appeared” to solve the problem, was a liberal.

But did radicals “transform the moral culture” and apply the pressure that made Lincoln take the actions that ended slavery? Actually, that’s not quite the right question. If the radicals did help inspire change but would have accomplished more by using the liberal ethic instead, then their radical utopian ethic actually made a negative contribution to social change—even though the radicals themselves may have made a positive contribution. If you fight with one hand tied behind your back, you may help win the battle, but that doesn’t mean having your hand tied behind your back (by the radical ethic) is helpful.

In the previous chapter, we saw that Kazin used the example of the “Schism of 1840” to draw the distinction between the radical and liberal ethics. That schism occurred between Garrison’s radical abolitionists, who would not participate in electoral politics, and those who compromised by forming the Liberty Party and putting their demand for immediate abolition on hold—Kazin called this a “vital compromise.” And just participating in politics was another huge compromise with Garrison’s radical views.

In any case, Kazin emphatically identifies Garrison’s group as subscribing to Weber’s “ultimate ends” ethic, which I call the radical utopian ethic, and just as clearly identifies the splinter group that formed the Liberty Party as subscribing to Weber’s “responsibility” ethic, which I call the liberal, strategic ethic.

So the question is this: Did the radical ethic help the Garrison group accomplish more than it would have accomplished with the liberal strategic ethic? And the answer is “no” for two reasons. First, the Liberty faction, the political abolitionists, were strategically quite brilliant both in their Congressional lobbying and in working to build a party that was not dependent on Southern votes. This became the Republican Party. So the liberal abolitionist contribution to the struggle was immense and in the end decisive. And the actions they took would all have been prohibited under Garrison’s radical ethic.

Second, although the radicals stirred up support, they also stimulated huge antipathy, which ended up damaging non-radical abolitionists as well as the radicals. And by refusing to join the liberal effort, they could make only the most tangential contributions to the party-building and lobbying efforts that eventually elected Lincoln. So while they may have made a positive contribution on balance, they could have contributed far more by joining the political abolitionists. That means their radicalism was a negative factor in ending slavery.

Finally, Kazin notes that “the popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin dwarfed that of every other abolitionist production. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sentimental 1852 exposé outsold every other novel in the nineteenth-century United States.” It also inspired “eight different stage versions.” Stowe first published her book in The National Era, a newspaper dedicated to explaining “the leading Principles and Measures of the Liberty Party.” As Kazin makes clear, Stowe was no radical.

So, for the biggest social change in our history—the end of slavery—is Kazin right that radicals were “far better at helping to transform the moral culture?” Given how much hatred they stirred up against  their position, even in the North, and Kazin’s report of Stowe’s immense influence, I find that highly improbable. 

But what about their political actions? Did burning the Constitution, rejecting electoral politics, and trying to prevent the political abolitionism that led to the Republican Party and the election of Lincoln do more good than they would have done using the liberal, strategic ethic? 

From the success of the liberal abolitionists—capturing national headlines from Washington D.C., forming the Republican Party, and electing Lincoln—I would say, hands down, the liberals had the more effective approach. Had Garrison abandoned his radical, utopian ethic and gone with the liberal, strategic ethic, I cannot help but think that would have strengthened the abolitionist cause.

Garrison may well have played a positive role on balance, even taking into account his many negative contributions. But the radical, utopian ethic that Kazin advocates surely made him less effective, not more.

Was Lincoln an Anxious Opportunist? I will let Frederick Douglass answer that question. That liberals are mere opportunists is the other half of Kazin’s theory of why radicals are the ones who really drive progressive change.

After having been partly taught but then forbidden to read, and then having taught himself on the sly—and after serving several masters, one of whom whipped him mercilessly—Frederick Douglass escaped slavery at the age of 20. As an abolitionist and renowned feminist, he was to become one of the greatest American orators of the 19th century. No one thought harder than Douglass about how to free the slaves.

Douglass parted ways with the radical abolitionists over their rejection of the Union and our Constitution sometime in the 1840s. Twice during the Civil War, when he felt that Lincoln was immorally compromising the interest of Blacks, he was able to discuss his views directly with Lincoln. In both cases, he came away satisfied with Lincoln’s explanations.

Just days after Lincoln’s assassination, Charlotte Scott, a former slave, decided Lincoln should have a memorial. She contributed her entire savings of $5 to start the process. Former slaves, primarily Black veterans, contributed the rest. Douglass delivered the oration at the dedication of the memorial.

He listed many of Lincoln’s actions that seemed hostile to Blacks. Taken together, these would be considered the most immoral set of liberal compromises ever enacted. And many radicals still see them this way. But Douglass did not. Instead, he explained why they were necessary to gain the “earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen.” He continued, “Without this, his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless.” That’s a powerful justification, and he expanded on it in the excerpts that follow.

He was willing to pursue, recapture and send back the fugitive slave to his master … after accepting our services as colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and torture as colored prisoners … 

When we saw all this, and more, we were at times grieved, stunned and greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they ached and bled. Nor was this, even at that time, a blind and unreasoning superstition.

We were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln and to make a reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position. We saw him, measured him and estimated him; not by stray utterances … but in the light of the stern logic of great events. [This logic is what the radicals’ utopian ethic forbids.]

It mattered little to us what language he might employ on special occasions … it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement. [Note the importance of a movement and that Lincoln, the strategist, and not Garrison, the radical, was leading it.]

Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people. … measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.

In his heart of hearts, he loathed and hated slavery. The man who could say the following gives all needed proof of his feeling on the subject: 

Fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away. Yet, if God wills it to continue till all the wealth piled by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn by the sword, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether …

I believe this speech is the most powerful and eloquent argument ever made for acting strategically, as Lincoln did so brilliantly, and for recognizing brilliant strategy, as Douglass did. Lincoln needed Douglass’s help, and had Douglass not been open to strategic thinking—had he remained a radical—he would have been a hindrance, not a help.

With Douglass’s explanation, we are presented with a choice. We can believe Kazin’s accusation that abolitionists on their way to forming the Republican Party were mere “anxious opportunists” and his insinuation that Lincoln probably was not much different. Or we can accept the views of Frederick Douglass—that Lincoln, in his heart of hearts, “loathed and hated slavery.” And that the compromises he made were strategic and essential for winning the war and ending slavery. In my view, Douglass’s views are completely credible and demolish the idea that Lincoln was a mere opportunist being prodded or guided by radicals.

Bridging the Radical-Liberal Gap

Lincoln was a liberal, but pursuing the Civil War and freeing the slaves was radical. Let’s take a moment to clear that up, because more radical liberals—Teddy and Frankin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr.—will show up as we examine the next three fundamental social changes.

Historian Richard Hofstadter, who focused on American political history, was a self-declared “radical liberal.” He was anti-capitalist yet considered the late-’60s radicals to be “simple-minded, moralistic, ruthless and destructive.” His goals were radical, but he knew the road was long and difficult.

There’s no contradiction between wanting vast social progress and realizing that getting there will take good strategy, painful compromises, and many decades of struggle. In fact, being a radical liberal—a strategic liberal with radical ideas—is the best way to keep making progress.

That’s good news for radicals. They can keep their ideals, give up their starry-eyed utopian ethics, and become radical liberals who compromise strategically.

Douglass showed how Lincoln was a strategic compromiser but said he was “swift and radical.” Lincoln was willing to fight rather than chance the likely expansion of slavery. That is more radical than the radical abolitionists’ suggestion: 

Let the South march off with flags and trumpets … Give her jewels of silver and gold, and rejoice that she has departed.

So proclaimed Wendell Phillips, the radical “abolition’s golden trumpet,” as soon as the first state declared it would secede. William Lloyd Garrison agreed.

The End of Laissez-Faire Capitalism

The Progressive Era ended laissez-faire capitalism. Before then, America had no governmental restrictions on business—monopoly was legal, there were no workplace safety rules, no limits on the workday or workweek, and no consumer protections. Working conditions were horrific.

The decisive turn against laissez-faire capitalism occurred during Teddy Roosevelt’s first term, starting in late 1901. In the late 1800s, public sentiment had turned against monopolies and trusts. Some legislation had been passed, but it was only under Teddy Roosevelt that businesses began to feel the effects.

What makes this a truly fundamental social change is that it did not fade out at the end of the Progressive Era but continued to grow and mature to the present day. Of course, there have been mistakes and setbacks, but the increase in corporate regulation, which started at zero in 1900, has been phenomenal, and has made capitalism much more humane.

Was it the radicals? Kazin would like us to believe that radicals played a major role, but he finds little evidence. He dismisses the radical anarchist movement as meeting a self-inflicted “early death.” He dismisses the Socialists, saying Eugene V. “Debs’ great spirit could not obscure the futility of his cause.” Even the Populists, who achieved 10% of the popular vote in 1892, quickly faded away, and Kazin doesn’t even call them radicals.

So instead of these obvious possibilities, Kazin concludes: “The powerful critiques of monopoly … voiced by radicals like [Henry] George and [Edward] Bellamy … put an end to the freebooting capitalism of the nineteenth century.” Really?! Two guys you may never have heard of ended laissez-faire capitalism in America?

Edward Bellamy wrote Looking Backward, which described a perfect communist utopia (the next step after socialism) in the year 2000. Problem was, it gave only one small clue as to how to reach this utopian state. Here’s the clue: Bellamy’s utopia was powered by “the final monopoly in which all previous and lesser monopolies were swallowed up … The epoch of trusts had ended in The Great Trust.” And this idea led to Roosevelt’s trust-busting?! Not really. Bellamy’s book was an extremely popular, but short-lived, distraction—nothing more.

Henry George was far more substantive and rather brilliant. A self-taught economist, he proposed a tax on land as the best and only necessary tax. But George tied his proposal closely to the Bible and Christianity, sure that his tax could end poverty and bring “heaven on earth.”

He saw no need to reign in capitalism so long as only land was taxed. Again, Kazin seems not to have figured out how this led to trust-busting, corporate regulation, consumer protection, or the eight-hour workday. I’d like to suggest a different theory.

The progressive movement. Teddy Roosevelt filed suit against a massive railroad trust in 1902 and won the case. That was the first major antitrust victory, and it led to 44 antitrust suits filed during Roosevelt’s two terms and twice as many filed under Taft’s term as president. In 1903, Roosevelt also created the Department of Commerce and Labor with its Bureau of Corporations. That turned into the Federal Trade Commission, now in charge of consumer protection and the enforcement of antitrust law. He also passed the first consumer protection legislation, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Federal Meat Inspection Act.

Roosevelt was no radical. As he put it, nothing would be accomplished “if we do not work through practical methods and with a readiness to face life as it is, and not as we think it ought to be.” That’s the most succinct endorsement you’ll ever find for using the strategic liberal approach instead of the utopian radical approach.

As always, the liberal politicians needed the backing of a popular movement. The famed Progressive Movement was driven not by radical dreams but by the shocking and visible consequences of laissez-faire capitalism.

Farmers were impoverished and bankrupted by railroad trusts and Eastern financial capitalists. Small-time oil producers like the parents of famous “muckraker” Ida Tarbell were bankrupted by the outrageous business practices of robber barons like John D. Rockefeller. Jacob Riis, a confidant of Roosevelt, published How the Other Half Lives, exposing the horrendous working/living conditions of immigrants. Stephen Crane described the life of young boys working 10-hour days in coal mines, growing up owing their souls to the company store until they were buried in the company graveyard. Behind locked doors, 146 workers perished in a sweatshop fire. The company was absolved of responsibility and collected $64,925 in insurance damages. The families on average received $12 per life lost.

These atrocities drove progressive change—not radical, fuzzy-headed utopian novels or radical proposals for magic taxes. In good radical fashion, Kazin does not even consider the impact of the horrors of laissez-faire capitalism on the non-radical public, which he always sees as hopelessly ignorant, uncaring, and in need of the insightful moral guidance of radicals.

The end of laissez-faire capitalism was brought about by good-hearted people pushing for reforms that happened one step at a time with the help of good-hearted politicians who worked hard and strategically to pass these reforms. That’s strategic liberal incrementalism. It’s not incremental because we prefer slowness for its own sake; it’s incremental because it’s a hard process, and small, sure-footed steps prove quickest in the long run.

Launching Responsible Government

Progressivism aimed to make capitalists play fair and to level the playing field between labor and capital. But progressivism did not view the government as having much responsibility for those the capitalist system left destitute.

The Great Depression drove home the need for the federal government to take an active role in ensuring the public welfare. This led Franklin Roosevelt to create his New Deal. That was never intended to last, and it didn’t. But it opened the door to a new view of government responsibility that was soon cemented in place by Social Security. In 1930, public social spending was half a percent of GDP; by 2016, it had grown to 19%.

The popular movement. There was enormous public sentiment during the Depression in favor of government action. Although this did produce radical activity among the intelligentsia and in parts of the working class, this radical activity did not have much impact on the Roosevelt administration, probably because the radicals’ electoral base was far too small. When Roosevelt was elected in 1932, the Socialists got 2.2% of the vote and the Communists 0.25%. By 1940, the Socialists, too, were down to 0.25% and the Communists to half of that. Meanwhile, Roosevelt was winning by landslide margins. When Norman Thomas, the five-time Socialist Party presidential candidate, was asked if FDR was carrying out his socialist program, he quipped, “Yes, he is carrying it out in a coffin.”

Huey Long, who by 1935 had organized 27,000 Share Our Wealth Clubs with more than seven-million members, had far more impact on Roosevelt, who actually brought him home to meet his mother. Roosevelt also called him the second most dangerous man in America. But Huey was no radical. He was a pragmatist who hated socialism. Kazin knows this and ignores him. Huey was another radical liberal.

Roosevelt listened to the popular movement, the voice of which was predominantly liberal and looking for practical solutions—mainly jobs. His longest-lasting programmatic contributions were the Wagner Act, which gave workers the right to form and join unions, and the Social Security Act. 

The authors of these Acts, Robert Wagner and Francis Perkins, respectively, were both highly dedicated liberal reformers with lifelong records of service. They were not remotely like the opportunistic political-establishment hacks Kazin and other radicals would have you believe are only motivated by pressure from radicals. FDR’s fundamental social change was brought about by dedicated, strategic liberals, not by radicals.

The End of Jim Crow

The end of Jim Crow laws in the South meant the end of legal segregation and of legal exclusion from the ballot box, as well as an end to de-facto terrorist enforcement of White supremacist norms. In my view, this is the second most important social change after the ending of slavery. 

It has not, of course, ended racism or done anything close to that. But breaking that system—the laws along with their enforcement by state-assisted terrorism—required a century-long struggle by Blacks that led to the most advanced political movement this country has ever seen.

But neither Kazin nor Black Power radical Stokely Carmichael nor the radical founders of Critical Race Theory (Ch. 36) agree with that judgment of the civil rights movement. Kazin includes a 10-page section that covers both the civil rights movement and the Black power movement. He begins with his only mention of the Civil Rights Act: 

The same elites who [bombed Vietnam] also sponsored the Peace Corps and the Civil Rights Act, hoping to mollify the discontented before they turned to revolution.

The word “subterfuge”—deceit used to achieve one’s goal—comes to mind. According to Kazin, the Civil Rights Act was a deceit used to avoid genuine revolutionary change. That echoes what Stokely Carmichael said at a huge rally in 1966 at U.C. Berkeley:

We’ve said that integration was irrelevant when initiated by Blacks [he meant Dr. King] and that in fact, it was an insidious subterfuge for the maintenance of White supremacy.

That’s a direct attack on all of Dr. King’s work, and the work of every hero who risked or gave their lives in the civil rights movement. Kazin confirms his view that Black radicals, and not the civil rights movement, deserve all the credit:

Radicals like Carmichael and [Black Panther Huey] Newton had jolted millions of people to comprehend themselves and their society in assertive and candid ways … This new understanding was an authentic kind of freedom.

In our first three cases, radicals try to take credit for an agreed-upon fundamental social change. But in this case, they disparage ending Jim Crow as a help to White supremacy and claim that instead, the fundamental social change was gaining an “authentic kind of freedom” via the Black power movement. The question this time is not who caused the change but which change was fundamental—the end of Jim Crow or some quite different “authentic kind of freedom” caused by millions comprehending themselves (whatever that means).

Which did more for the Black community, the Panthers’ “authentic kind of freedom” or what Kazin implies is the “inauthentic freedom” to attend a good school, not be lynched with the sheriff’s approval, and so on?

Because Kazin’s sole claim for radicals throughout American history is their supposed far greater ability to “transform the moral culture,” let us compare the sources of these competing moral transformations—the Panthers’ leadership and the civil rights leadership. Which was a better source of moral culture? 

Was Huey P. Newton really a better moral leader than Martin Luther King Jr.? That’s Kazin’s radical claim in a nutshell.

Black power. Stokely Carmichael, who launched the Black power movement and gave the Panthers their name, started out as a Freedom Rider and organizer of newly-enfranchised Black voters. But before that, he had been radicalized in high school by the son of the chairman of the Communist Party. Similarly, the Black Panthers were self-declared communist revolutionaries, following Stalin and Mao. 

The Black Panthers’ elementary school in Oakland, California, and their free breakfasts for poor children were widely acclaimed. But according to Erica Huggins (the school director for eight years until it folded in 1982) “Toward the end, paranoia and addiction and all these things [from] outside the school impacted everything.” Huey Newton, who had a powerful cocaine habit, was charged with 33 counts of grand theft for embezzling $600,000 from the school between 1980 and 1982.

Before becoming school director, Erica Huggins had moved to New Haven, Connecticut, after her husband was shot and killed by a rival Black power organization. There, with Elaine Brown, she founded a new chapter of the Black Panther Party. 

Soon, Alex Rackley, a 19-year-old member of Huggins’s chapter, was suspected of spying for the FBI. So he was taken to the basement of the Panthers’ headquarters and tortured for two days until he “confessed.” A day later, they shot him. As it happened, they had the wrong guy. After admitting she was present for the torture but claiming she was afraid not to participate, Huggins was acquitted by a hung jury.

In 1974, Huggins and Elaine Brown were both back in Oakland, and Brown was leading the Oakland chapter of the Panthers while Huey was on the lam in Cuba, having murdered a prostitute. Brown hired Betty Van Patter, a Panthers-friendly bookkeeper. On Friday night, December 13, 1974, Betty was with friends at a bar when a Black man handed her a note. She left immediately and was soon seen at the Lamp Post bar, a Black Panthers hangout. Then she disappeared. Her body was found 35 days later washed up on a San Francisco Bay beach. She had been badly beaten.

Ken Kelley would later learn what had happened. He had once been the Minister of Information for the White Panther Party (Black Panther Party sympathizers), and when Huey Newton returned from Cuba in 1977, he began helping him with public relations. Kelley reminisced about his many encounters with Newton in an article he wrote for the East Bay Express three weeks after Newton’s murder during a drug deal gone wrong. Kelley’s concluding revelation was this:

While he’d been in Cuba, he told me, he’d ordered the murder of a good friend of mine who had been hired to do bookkeeping for the Panthers. She’d refused orders to cook the books, to make them look legit, and had threatened to call the cops. Listening to Huey brought all the stupid, senseless bloodshed back home. It hadn’t been a simple hit—she’d been tortured, raped, shot and thrown into the bay.

I think about my dead friend Betty almost every day. I’m sitting in her office chair right now—her daughter gave it to me—as I type out the words of what has to be the hardest piece I’ve ever written in all my years in journalism.

There is no credible evidence that Betty threatened to call the cops, but Elaine Brown does tell us, in A Taste of Power, that if any controversy leaked out, it would have damaged her campaign for Oakland City Council. She lost anyway.

This glimpse of the dark side is, of course, a one-sided view of the Panthers, but it is a view generally hidden from the broader left (for instance by Kazin), and it’s a crucial piece of the radical puzzle.

It makes clear the damaging nature of the radical utopian ethic. As Max Weber noted 100 years ago, if a radical takes a “righteous” action that damages his own cause, the radical believes the fault must lie with someone else. That’s why the entire radical left blamed the torture-murder of Alex Rackley on the well-known FBI infiltration of the Panthers. The Panthers were viewed as righteous, so any evil resulting from their actions must lie with someone else.

Of course, most Panthers supporters, Black and White, were well-intentioned progressives and just sucked in by Black power mythology. Ken Kelley was once one of these, and I was on the fringes of this con job for a while myself.

Civil rights. The civil rights movement could not have been more different from the radical Black power movement. It had radical goals—the end of Jim Crow and decent jobs—but it did not follow the utopian radical ethics that shunned compromise. Equality with Whites was a dream, but it was not a utopian dream—White America was no utopia. And every step in the civil rights movement was a compromise relative to their goal.

The civil rights movement was a movement of radical liberals (liberals with radical goals) with a brilliant strategy developed over decades. Strategic discussions of nonviolence began in the 1920s, and the first direct contact with Gandhi was a note sent by W. E. B. Du Bois in 1929. By 1936, King’s mentor, theologian Howard Thurman, was meeting Gandhi in India. Thurman was also the mentor of James Farmer, who in 1961 organized the first Freedom Ride. King himself spent a month in India studying Gandhi’s teachings. All of this was preparation for building a movement that would transform the moral culture in a vastly more positive way than radicals seem capable of recognizing.

The other half of the radical myth of moral transformation holds that political leaders like LBJ and Bobby Kennedy, who actually made change happen, are just morally-deficient opportunists. Let’s take a look.

Bobby Kennedy, President Kennedy’s attorney general, was the movement’s door to political power. He was sympathetic and had potential, but needed education. His close watch over and interactions with the movement did the job, and Bobby became a committed advocate for civil rights. He convinced his brother, who delivered his “Report to the American People on Civil Rights,” proposing what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Bobby’s dedication was recognized by the Black community, as was made clear at the time of King’s assassination. Bobby was on his way to a rally in the heart of the Indianapolis ghetto at 17th and Broadway. Fearing for his safety, the chief of police told Bobby not to go. But his assistant, who was Black, knew Bobby’s reputation in the ghetto and said he “could sleep all night in the middle of 17th and Broadway and not be hurt.” Bobby did not turn back. At the end of his short speech, the crowd went home, and Indianapolis stayed calm while 100 other cities erupted in riots.

When President Kennedy was assassinated, it was left to Lyndon Johnson to get civil rights bills passed by the Southern Democrats. They knew how to stop such bills—but so did LBJ, who beat their strategy. Not only was Johnson a brilliant political strategist, but he was also a highly effective moral strategist, as he once explained:

Now I knew that as President I couldn’t make people want to integrate their schools or open their doors to Blacks, but I could make them feel guilty for not doing it, and I believed it was my moral responsibility to do precisely that—to use the moral persuasion of my office to make people feel that segregation was a curse they’d carry with them to their graves.

After his freshman year of college, Johnson had taught at a segregated grade school for Mexican-Americans. He was quickly promoted to principal and organized all sorts of activities. He never forgot those kids, and when he signed the 1965 Higher Education Act, he said, “It was then that I made up my mind that this nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American.” Radicals may paint him as a mere dealmaking opportunist, but that is only because of their own blindness. 

Conclusion

The critical pieces are now in place, and we can see clearly how change happened. First came liberal movements such as political abolitionism, progressivism, Huey Long’s Share Our Wealth movement, and the civil rights movement. As liberal movements, they employed strategy. They took steps they believed would succeed, even though this meant the steps were small. In other words, the movements made compromises when compared with their radical-liberal (not utopian) goals, but they were compromises that helped to gain momentum or gain a new foothold.

Second, liberal politicians are needed in positions of power. They can only do a little to create public sentiment themselves, so they wait for a social movement like the progressive movement or the civil rights movement to shift public sentiment and then climb on board. But it took Johnson, an acclaimed dealmaker, to finish the job. And the movement needed the brilliant leadership of Dr. King. Both the politicians and the movement leadership were essential.

Looking at the four most dramatic social changes in American history, we see the liberal approach working every time while the radical approach has had little influence except when it was negative: Radicals in the 1840s tried to stop those who formed the Republican Party. Radicals provoked Teddy Roosevelt’s misstep against the “muckrakers.” Radicals infiltrated FDR’s administration to spy for Stalin, and the radicals of the late 1960s help drive 20 million from the Democratic Party.

Once again, I am using “liberal” to mean those who accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions, think strategically, and are willing to compromise for the sake of progress. The goal of the liberal is progress, not righteous purity.

Positive fundamental social change takes a social movement and good politicians working together with each side respecting the fact that they play very different roles. Both should have a radical vision of the future, but both should adopt the liberal strategic ethic and reject the radical utopian ethic of self-righteous purity. We should strive to follow FDR’s model and be tolerant, radical liberals.