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
What are the proper limits of liberal tolerance? Mark Zuckerberg, of all people, appears to have found himself pinned against this seemingly impossible question. Shortly after giving a speech at Georgetown University about freedom of expression, the Facebook CEO has found himself hounded with questions about his choice to include
It was as I recall in the form of a scroll, gold leaf and all. And I found it one day in a drawer of old photographs hidden away. And my eyes still grow damp to see good old King George signed it with his own rubber stamp. Roger Waters,
During and after World War II the architects of the economic institutions of the liberal international order articulated a compelling rationale for the structure and rules of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). In a recent article I identified a common set of
“But is it supported by Scripture?” he asked me as we stood in the taco truck line after the church service. The “he” we’ll call Just-Asking-Questions. The “it” was the idea that the history of racial injustice in America, enabled by Protestant churches, required some sort of response in
“In the first three decades of the twentieth century,” Thomas Leonard tells us in Illiberal Reformers, “eugenic ideas were politically influential, culturally fashionable, and scientifically mainstream. The elite sprinkled their conversations with eugenic concerns to signal their au courant high-mindedness.” “Eugenic thinking in forms both mundane and grand increasingly stained
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
In a recent piece for Vox, Zach Beauchamp claims that “Many modern liberals, including some brilliant and well-regarded thinkers, do not seem up to the task of defending liberalism from its newest wave of critics.” He says that they lean on old arguments and sit smugly on the victories of
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
A liberal is a person who can’t take his own side in a quarrel. Robert Frost Richard Rorty stands as the most controversial figure in 20th century English-language philosophy. As William Curtis documents in Defending Rorty, Rorty’s untroubled attitude and deflationary arguments were a lightning rod among analytic
Two years ago, a group of friends and I were discussing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to “intensify” the crackdown on black-market cigarettes after having enacted a tax hike on them. Since NYPD officers ostensibly looking for black-market cigarettes had killed Eric Garner a mere three
As one of the most progressive candidates in the 2020 field—even to the left of Bernie Sanders on some tellings—it may seem ridiculous on its face to make a “neoliberal” case for Senator Elizabeth Warren. And “left-neoliberal” will strike many readers as an oxymoron. I hope to explain