This essay is cross-published on Substack for the author’s paying subscribers. In the Smithian version of its origin story, liberalism takes the modern (Mercantile) state for granted and understands itself from the start as a reformist and ameliorative project of the many violent tendencies in it. The key conceptual-political
Conservatives recently had an apoplectic fit over Bud Light’s product placement making some sort of partnership with transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney. There have also been conservative freakouts at Mulvaney partnering with Nike, a man screaming obscenities over a Lego pride set, and around one stupidly outraged viral tweet
For friends of liberalism, to be liberal-minded means possessing a broad curiosity about all things unbridled by prejudice or contempt. As the Roman playwright Terence once put it: “I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.” For critics of liberalism this self-ascribed broadmindedness is either or
Since 1980, the average price of tuition has risen over 1000%, far outpacing the rate of inflation. This presents a challenge for teenagers who are graduating high school and planning their next steps. While college has historically led to an outsized increase in wages over time, students are now re-evaluating
I am a child of the 90s. America had emerged from the long twilight struggle of the Cold War victorious, materially and ideologically: liberal capitalism was, it was said, the end of history. As such it was hoped that free trade and free exchange would slowly see the People’s
Liberals have an environmental problem. Many, if not most, liberals understand that climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions and associated environmental problems require a concerted political response. Yet as a political movement fundamentally committed to the value of the individual, liberalism hasn’t always had much to say about
It may be difficult to believe today, but Congress was once a force to be reckoned with. The pinnacle of this, of course, was Reconstruction, during which Congress regularly overrode the president’s veto and even impeached one for the first time. Most significantly, the Reconstruction Congress regularly put the
Recent decades have been kind to liberal and Marxist attempts at dialogue. But old animosities are like Henry Kissinger; they die slowly. Of course there are still considerable disagreements between liberals and Marxists on a wide variety of issues. This is especially true of classical liberals and libertarians, who still
The discourse about the structure of the world political order has come to turn increasingly around the question of ‘poles’ of geopolitical power—centers of influence and control, usually assumed to be particularly influential nation states, around which others orbit. Most recently, France’s president Emmanuel Macron declared, after discussions
Editor’s Note: Eden Knight (2000–2023) was a Saudi Arabian trans woman studying computer science in the United States. After her visa expired, she began the process of seeking asylum. During this time, she was contacted by Michael Pocalyko and Ellen Cole, who promised to help her with her
But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer. The rosy blush of its laughing heir, the Enlightenment, seems also to be irretrievably fading, and the idea of duty in one’s calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs.
Ever since Donald Trump first came down that golden escalator, everyone from laymen to various pundits and historians have debated if it is appropriate to speak of him and his Republican Party as fascist. It has generally been the position of the professionally-contrarian pundit class that to use the f-word