Walter Lippmann

If anyone is worthy of the title of “Cold War liberal,” you think it would be the celebrity journalist and public philosopher Walter Lippmann. Lippmann coined the phrase “Cold War” in 1947 and had long been considered the guru of modern liberalism. Yet Lippmann was a harsh critic of containment and, by the time of the Vietnam War, considered himself a “neo-isolationist.” He was also self-identified as a conservative by the Cold War era and was an outspoken critic of New Deal “planning.” Lippmann’s career highlights the problem of talking about “Cold War liberalism” in the singular. At the same time, there were few greater champions than Lippmann of a large military establishment and an expansive welfare state that typified Cold War liberal orthodoxy.