Tag: Liberalism

  • Rethinking Liberalism and Fascism

    Rethinking Liberalism and Fascism

    Liberalism thinks of fascism as the domination of extremist precision, the suppression of some creative vitality. The deliberative character of parliamentary democracy – the inconclusiveness of dialogue – is contrasted with the absolutist closure of fascism. What if we reversed the liberal value judgement regarding fascism? What if fascism consisted not of dogmatic fixity and […]

  • Liberalism and Its Discontents

    These are difficult, perilous, and frustrating times. Many cherished beliefs are coming unraveled. Many once-shared values are no longer shared. And distrust of unshakeable institutions is widespread. Yet it was only a little more than three decades ago that North America and European intellectuals joined in acknowledging the triumph of the Western world’s “gift” to […]

  • Postliberalism: A Dangerous “New” Conservatism

    Postliberalism: A Dangerous “New” Conservatism

    In Wilhelm von Humboldt’s book The Limits of State Action (1792), one of the most thoughtful expressions of classical liberalism, these passages appear: The true end of Man… is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole. Freedom is the first and indispensable condition which the possibility of […]

  • Greater of Two Evils

    Greater of Two Evils

    I’m reposting this article about the Democratic Party five years after it was published because after re-reading it, I wouldn’t change a thing. In addition, the Democratic Party has become even more right-wing since it gained power in 2020. At the end of the article I will name the many ways it has gotten still […]

  • Postliberals Against the Common Good

    “The Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history,” says Noam Chomsky. It seems like a ridiculous statement. “Has there ever been an organization in human history that is dedicated, with such commitment, to the destruction of organized human life on Earth? Not that I’m aware of.” He has a point. Even the […]

  • Norman Finkelstein: A National Treasure?

    Norman Finkelstein: A National Treasure?

    Among the most dangerous people in the US are those who actually once fervently believed the foundational myths of the country’s social and political order. It’s the true believers — we who are schooled on republican virtues, democratic procedures, universal equality, and fair play that are said to be deeply embedded in the US experience […]

  • Love of Freedom Defines the Political Left, Not the Right

    Political discourse in the United States consists largely of lies and confusions. One of the greatest of lies and confusions, which I hope to help dispel in this article, is the common delimitation of the very concepts “left” and “right”: it is claimed that to be on the right is to value freedom above all—this […]

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