Samuel Moyn on the Abandonment of Revolutionary Liberalism

Samuel Moyn argues that Cold War liberals abandoned liberalism's revolutionary promise.

Western Liberals Need to Extend the Same Humanity to Gaza as They Did to Ukraine

Western liberals have not extended the same solidarity to the Palestinian people that they did to the Ukrainians.

A Tragic Mistake Based on a Faulty Premise

Joe Biden started his political career blasé about the Vietnam War. He is ending it blasé about Palestinian genocide. In 1972, while campaigning for his first term in the senate, Joe Biden couldn’t muster up the moral outrage needed to condemn the Vietnam War. Despite the twenty-fold increase in

The Liberal Centrist Trap

Identity politics is vital for liberalism precisely because oppression is never neutral, color-blind, or universal.

Fascism and the Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century

From Russia to China, from Azerbaijan to Israel and Palestine, fascist political projects are gaining strength.

Statement on the Events in Israel and Gaza

To be a liberal is to be for the party of humanity: For human rights and human dignity for all persons regardless of nation, color, or creed. Last Saturday, Hamas perpetrated a horrific attack on civilians, in violation of these universal rights. Hamas should immediately free its hostages without condition.

Nietzsche's Critique of Liberalism

Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal, the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions! One knows, of course, what they bring about: they undermine the Will to Power, they are the levelling of mountain

Taking Inclusion Seriously: Kevin Elliott's Democracy for Busy People

“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” This question, asked by English writer Samuel Johnson in 1775, still touches a nerve today. Americans on the one hand carry the pride of one of the oldest sets of representative institutions in the

How New York City Botched the Migrant Crisis

It is not easy to leave your home and move elsewhere. It’s harder when you are moving to another country, leaving behind your old home and neighborhood, and harder still when you are fleeing persecution and violence because of who you are.  These difficulties are only compounded when the

Public Reason and Unreasonable Pluralism

In the context of castigating authors’ servile dedications to superiors, and dedicating his own (1757) Four Dissertations to his cousin the playwright John Home, David Hume offers ‘liberty of thought’ as an example of ‘true liberty.’ When I first read it, I thought he meant to discuss what we now

Deradicalizing the Center

In 2016, the Washington Post ran a remarkable piece of journalism. Derek Black, a pedigreed, up-and-coming white nationalist leader had experienced an ideological transformation while a student at the New College of Florida.  After he was outed by another student as a white nationalist, the school reviewed Black’s academic

Chris Rufo and Critical Theory: Looking for Revolutionaries in the Wrong Places

In his bestselling new book, America’s Cultural Revolution: How The Radical Left Conquered Everything, Christopher F. Rufo describes a pivotal moment in the history of critical theory: the 1969 break between two of its leading thinkers: Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno. The men were early members, and for decades,