Matthew Downhour writes about liberal theory and the liberal tradition, and teaches history and economics.
It is difficult to offer a definition or even description of liberalism without referring to some kind of individualism. Liberalism assumes an inherent moral value in each person and defends their right to make their own decisions for their own lives. This has frequently put it into tension with nationalism,
Because liberalism is often seen, particularly on the left, as enjoying ideological hegemony in the modern United States, there is an assumption that the current police system is a natural outgrowth of liberal ideas. Writing in Jacobin, Alex S. Vitale argues that “Liberals’ reform agenda stems from a belief that
The murder of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer has once again brought the issue of systemic racism, police violence, and criminal justice reform to the forefront of the American national conversation, in print and in the streets. As part of that conversation, Liberal Currents solicited
The case for universal, direct benefits over those funneled through employers is strong in normal times—direct provision of things like healthcare may cost more in taxes, but saving employers from that burden removes a major distortion from the market and ultimately maximizing liberty and efficiency for both firms and
Trump made headlines in announcing that the US will be suspending financial support to the World Health Organization (WHO) until completing an investigation into its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. While this action has been rightly decried as an attempt to deflect blame for his own response, which was too
If ever rival countries were to be united by a truly common enemy, infectious disease should be that threat. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the global economy and has killed tens of thousands of people worldwide; containing and treating it is truly a global priority. However,
Asked to place the headline “Prisons Illegally Sterilizing Female Inmates”, most Americans would assume it came from the Jim Crow South or the height of eugenics in the 1930s. Few, if they hadn’t been tracking the particular story, would guess that the women in question—148 of them—were
The use of education to secure more egalitarian economic outcomes without outright redistribution has been a cherished goal of liberals in the United States for centuries. The public education ideal, first nationally codified in the Northwest Ordinance that set aside land for public schools in the Old Northwest, has carried
The mythology, rather than the history, of homesteading, looms large in the American imagination. Included in this mythology is the idea of ‘valueless’ land made valuable in the process of homesteading, and the supposed egalitarian nature of land distribution; this is supposed by many Americans both to have made the
Since 2016, to hear the media tell it, the world’s democracies have been faced with a deluge of ‘populism’. The word seems most commonly applied to President Donald Trump, but electoral surprises in large democracies—Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, Brexit, the Five Star Movement—have been blamed on the
Early liberals focused on dismantling de jure social hierarchies and mercantilist policies, but the onset of the Industrial Revolution presented a new set of challenges.. Though some hewed to the laissez faire doctrines of the 18th century and were suspicious of any industry regulation, the majority accepted that, given the
The president of the United States recently issued a statement – albeit via Twitter – where he “hereby ordered” that United States companies needed to move their manufacturing away from China. This was met with much derision and no small amount of mockery, but to a person unversed in the nuances of