A mostly unremarkable piece that ends with a bang:
> One turns back to Helena Rosenblatt’s 2018 book, “The Lost History of Liberalism,” which makes the case that liberalism is not a recent ideology but an age-old series of intuitions about existence. When the book appeared, it may have seemed unduly overgeneralized—depicting liberalism as a humane generosity that flared up at moments and then died down again. But, as the world picture darkens, her dark picture illuminates. There surely are a set of identifiable values that connect men and women of different times along a single golden thread: an aversion to fanaticism, a will toward the coexistence of different kinds and creeds, a readiness for reform, a belief in the public criticism of power without penalty, and perhaps, above all, a knowledge that institutions of civic peace are much harder to build than to destroy, being immeasurably more fragile than their complacent inheritors imagine. These values will persist no matter how evil the moment may become, and by whatever name we choose to whisper in the dark.
omnipotentsandwich on
The best way to defend liberalism is to talk about what people need. Talk about the economy, poverty, healthcare, jobs, etc. I think New Deal liberalism is the way to go. For many people, liberals are the people who nag about stuff no one really cares about. It also doesn’t help when they adopt right-wing ideas on the false belief that somehow you’ll win votes from people who don’t believe you for a second.
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A mostly unremarkable piece that ends with a bang:
> One turns back to Helena Rosenblatt’s 2018 book, “The Lost History of Liberalism,” which makes the case that liberalism is not a recent ideology but an age-old series of intuitions about existence. When the book appeared, it may have seemed unduly overgeneralized—depicting liberalism as a humane generosity that flared up at moments and then died down again. But, as the world picture darkens, her dark picture illuminates. There surely are a set of identifiable values that connect men and women of different times along a single golden thread: an aversion to fanaticism, a will toward the coexistence of different kinds and creeds, a readiness for reform, a belief in the public criticism of power without penalty, and perhaps, above all, a knowledge that institutions of civic peace are much harder to build than to destroy, being immeasurably more fragile than their complacent inheritors imagine. These values will persist no matter how evil the moment may become, and by whatever name we choose to whisper in the dark.
The best way to defend liberalism is to talk about what people need. Talk about the economy, poverty, healthcare, jobs, etc. I think New Deal liberalism is the way to go. For many people, liberals are the people who nag about stuff no one really cares about. It also doesn’t help when they adopt right-wing ideas on the false belief that somehow you’ll win votes from people who don’t believe you for a second.