Was Woodrow Wilson a conservative or a liberal or a moderate and did he make concessions to any type of group for political gain?

Answer 1

Answer to question on Woodrow Wilson It depends upon which era one is judging Woodrow Wilson. If one is judging him by today's era then Wilson is fairly conservative; however Wilson embraced many policies that a traditional conservative would never approve of, namely internationalism, joining an international peace group (The League of Nations), fighting in a foreign war against a nation that meant us no harm, and spreading democracy.

Most traditional conservatives prefer a non-interventionist foreign policy (not an isolationist one) and would prefer to keep out of war unless it is a last resort.

By today's era Wilson would be considered socially conservative and it is hard to imagine a religious man such as Woodrow Wilson supporting abortion and gay rights.

By his own era Wilson was considered a moderate. He was nowhere near as liberal as William Jennings Bryan and socially he was in step with the times. He was considered a progressive in that he desired for America to make the world safe for democracy, a hard sell with the American people who preferred a non-interventionist approach.

The answer to your question really depends on how one looks at it. Wilson was certainly a moderate in his era and a conservative by our own. This is mainly because over time our society has moved farther to the left to the point where many liberals consider FDR to have been a moderate when in his own era FDR was considered far left.

Matthew Randquist

If you look at Wilson's economics, you can conclude that he was mostly centrist, neither left-wing (and scoffing at the left-wing Peoples' and Socialist Parties) or right-wing (not Wall St.'s best friend, exactly, considering his anti-trust laws).

However, his social policies would be considered very reactionary today. He was extremely racist (even by the standards of his own day), and it is hard to imagine him supporting gay marriage or abortion in our times. As for the police state, he believed that the system of checks and balances was inconvenient; he signed the Espionage Act of 1917, which silenced anti-war protesters like Eugene V. Debs.

In short, while his economic policies are to the left of today's "center-left" parties (which have more or less moved to the right), they were centrist when compared to FDR and other left-leaning Democrats, and his reactionary social policies make him very authoritarian. For this reason, Wilson could be best characterized as a Third Positionist, in its original meaning.

T. J.

The top explanation is that he is a modern day conservative, and some of his ideals do align to conservatism, but if you looked at the things he did, in the whole, he was fairly liberal and is more of a modern day liberal. Even though the liberalism back around the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th was very different to the liberalism of today.

So, in conclusion, Woodrow Wilson was more liberal, being in the fact that he was a progressive, similar to Theodore Roosevelt and much of the politicians of today.

If you want a detailed explanation of Woodrow Wilson, I suggest that you read books similar to Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism, written by Ronald J. Pestritto.

Duncan McPhee