liberalism 
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SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
6/20/2023
Understanding the Leading Thinkers of the New American Right
by Charles King
The framework of integralist thought championed by Adrian Vermeule, Patrick Deneen and others argues for a view of the common good to supplant liberal individual rights as the core of a constitutional order. They claim to connect to intellectual traditions centuries old, but their claims of moral decline echo those of early 20th century eugenicists and nativists.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
4/21/2023
What Has Black Lives Matter Achieved? A New Critique from the Left
by Jay Caspian Kang
Political scientist Cedric Johnson argues in a new book that protest movements have fixated on racial identity at the expense of making a broad critique of how policing defends an unequal and exploitative society and building a bigger coalition for change. Writer Jay Caspian Kang puts this argument in the context of debates about identity politics from the center to the left.
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SOURCE: The Nation
1/24/2023
Why Can't the Democrats Build a Governing Majority? (Review of Timothy Shenk)
by Kim Phillips-Fein
In an implicit response to Richard Hofstadter's finding of the continuity of a narrow "American Political Tradition," Timothy Shenk examines the ways that activists have occasionally disrupted the political order and convinced people to "take a leap into an unknown future."
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SOURCE: Washington Monthly
12/28/2022
Ted Kennedy Bios Show Liberalism's Trials, and its Necessity
by David Masciotra
As liberalism is under attack from the right and from a growing left, the author argues that recent biographies of Ted Kennedy illustrate the imperfections and trials of the idea, but show it's still the best option for organizing a free and fair society.
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SOURCE: Activist History Review
11/8/2022
No, Liberal Historians Can't Tame Nationalism
by Eran Zelnik
Liberal historians confronted with both right-wing nationalism and renewed "history wars" have tried to thread a needle by telling a positive story of nationalism. The author contends the exclusionary and belligerent aspects of nationalism can't be domesticated by surrounding them with the right narrative.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
9/5/2022
Can We Do Better than Liberal Democracy?
by Adam Gopnik
Critic Adam Gopnik examines two recent books on alternatives to representative democracy that respond to the recent use of institutions by power-seeking authoritarians.
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SOURCE: The Baffler
6/27/2022
"Last Man Standing" – Michael Brenes on Francis Fukuyama and the Return of History
Presented with the manifest failure of a peaceful global liberal order after the end of the Cold War, Fukuyama now simply argues that people have failed classical liberalism.
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SOURCE: The Week
3/21/2022
The Thrill of Teaching Mill
by Samuel Goldman
Mill was prescient in focusing attention not only on the restriction of speech by the state, but on the cultural and social obstacles to dissenting opinion.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
3/14/2022
Francis Fukuyama Revisits the "End of History" and Liberalism's Prospects After War
"People really like being in liberal societies after they’ve gone through either horrible nationalist conflict (as in the two world wars of the 20th century) or they’ve had to live under authoritarian dictatorship (as people in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union did under communism)."
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SOURCE: The Nation
11/27/2021
Selective Conscience: New Book Dissects Rawls's Theory of Fairness
by Olúfémi O. Táíwò
Katrina Forrester's book shows the influence of John Rawls on the study of ethics, but also reveals the limits of abstract theory for understanding historical injustice.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/15/2021
The Bad Guys are Winning: The 21st Century Reversal of Liberalism
by Anne Applebaum
"Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services (military, police, paramilitary groups, surveillance), and professional propagandists."
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SOURCE: The Nation
11/15/2021
Stuck in the Middle: George Packer and Liberal Faith
by Nikhil Pal Singh
George Packer's commitment to liberalism prevents him from evaluating why it seems imperiled today.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
9/20/2021
Why a Liberal Education is Worth Defending
by Steve Mintz
Roosevelt Montas’s forthcoming "Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation" makes a powerful case for engagment with the Great Books as a way to subvert hierarchies and promote equity.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
8/20/2021
Liberal Democracy is Worth a Fight
by Anne Applebaum
"In the real world, the battle to defend liberal democracy is sometimes a real battle, a military battle, not merely an ideological battle."
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SOURCE: Public Books
8/20/2021
Review Essay: Freedom for Whom?
by Michael Mirer
Two recent books, by Tyler Stovall and Annelien De Dijn, interrogate the history of the idea of freedom and the question of whether western liberal democracy can be freed from its historical roots in exclusion and domination of others.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
8/2/2021
The Liberals Who Weakened Trust in Government
by Kim Phillips-Fein
Historian Kim Phillips-Fein writes that Paul Sabin's new book "Public Citizens" adds to understanding of the rise of conservatism and the power of attacks on "big government" by focusing on the role of liberal public interest groups in exposing the capture of the liberal regulatory state by big business interests.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
6/8/2021
Social Fissures have Made Building a Broad Liberal Coalition Hard for 50 Years
by Steven M. Gillon
Hostility toward the welfare state, frequently driven by the idea that government programs unfairly benefit minorities at the expense of whites, has prevented the Democratic party from consolidating a political majority for decades. Worshipping fallen heroes like Robert Kennedy obscures the political work needed to build and keep a coalition.
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/1/2021
Joe Biden, the Reverse Ronald Reagan
Is the Biden administration's response to the crises affecting America more than a collection of programs and initiatives? Is the Democratic party moving to firmly repudiate Ronald Reagan's quip that "government is the problem"?
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SOURCE: The Baffler
4/1/2021
Runaway American Dreams
by Dennis M. Hogan
What does it say about American liberalism that it's cultural tribune, Bruce Springsteen, is doing a corporate-sponsored podcast with the former President of the United States?
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/21/2021
Emmanuel Macron’s Socially Constructed Bogeymen
by Daniel W. Drezner
What, exactly, "Islamo-leftism" is, and what relationship it could possibly have to American academic theories, are two big questions left unanswered by the French President's attacks on academic ideas.