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Liberalism

political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality

Liberalismis apoliticalandmoral philosophybased onliberty,consent of the governedandequality before the law.

Liberalism, for all itsvirtues,has begun to develop a sense of entitlement, andneedstimeto rediscover itssoul.~Stephen L. Carter


Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A·B·C·D·E·F·G·H·I·J·K·L·M·N·O·P·Q·R·S·T·U·V·W·X·Y·Z·See also·External links

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  • Ultraliberalism today translates into a whimperingisolationisminforeign policy,a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy, and a pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order.
    • Spiro Agnew,speech before Illinois Republican meeting, Springfield, Illinois (September 10, 1970); reported inCollected Speeches of Spiro Agnew(1971), p. 193
  • [W]e claim to start from and to maintain in all our political action this fundamental principle—that the interests of the community as a whole ought to be paramount over the interests of anyclass,any interest, or any section which that community contains. That is the root and spring of Liberalism.
    • H. H. Asquith,speech in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (30 January 1895), quoted inThe Times(31 January 1895), p. 6

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  • He that defers hischarity'till he isdead,is (if a man weighs it rightly) rather liberal of another man's, than of his own.
    • Francis Bacon,Francisci Baconi Baronis de Verulamio… Opera Omnia Quatuor(1730), p. 298. Compare:The English Theophrastus: or, The manners of the age(1702), p. 268: "He that defers Charity till Death, is rather Liberal of another Man's, than of his own".
  • The doctrine was liberalism, which criticised and finally demolished the traditional conception of thenation-stateas a collective organism, a community; and asserted instead the primacy of theindividual.According to liberal thinking anationwas no more than so many human atoms who happened to live under the same set of laws. From such a belief it followed that theState,instead of being the embodiment of a national community as it had been under theTudorsand theCommonwealth,was required to dwindle into a kind ofpoliceman,standing apart from the national life, and with the merely negative task of keeping the free-for-all of individual competition within the bounds of decorum.
  • The parties which assumed the names of liberals were, or became in due course, simple guardians ofcapitalism.
  • A liberal is amanor awomanor achildwho looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
    • Leonard Bernstein,statement of 1953, quoted inA Wonderful Life: 50 Eulogies to Lift the Spirit(2006) by Cyrus M. Copeland, p. 190
  • Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than ingiftswell timed.
    • Jean de La Bruyère,inLes Caractères(1688), Aphorism 47 as translated inThe Characters of Jean de La Bruyère(1929) by Henri van Laun
    • Variant translations:
    • Liberality consists rather in giving seasonably than much.
    • Generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment.

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Realityhas a well-known liberal bias. ~Stephen Colbert
  • What do we mean by this Liberalism of which we talk?… I should say it means the acknowledgement in practical life of the truth that men are best governed who govern themselves; that the general sense of mankind, if left alone, will make for righteousness; that artificialprivilegesand restraints uponfreedom,so far as they are not required in the interests of the community, are hurtful; and that the laws, while, of course, they cannotequaliseconditions, can, at least, avoid aggravatinginequalities,and ought to have for their object the securing to every man the best chance he can have of a good and useful life.
    • Henry Campbell-Bannerman,The Liberal Magazine(January 1898), p. 530, quoted in John Wilson,C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman(Constable, 1973), p. 232
  • Liberalism in its political instantiation, for all of its appeal, is so powerful a theory that it probably works better in opposition than in government. Modern liberalism has become what liberalphilosophersnot long ago would have derided as a “comprehensive view” — a theory that believes itself able to give an account of how every institution of the society should operate, and even, alas, how people should think. Add to that a dash of triumphalism, and you wind up with a government impatient with the tendency of human beings to resist having too much forced on them at once.
  • Humanitycannot be made equal by declarations on paper. Unless the material conditions forequalityexist, it is worse than mockery to pronounce men equal.
  • [John Casey] claimed that the liberal tradition was defective in its explanation of the citizen's attachment to the state itself since it ignored hispatrioticallegiance to the "continuity ofinstitutions,shared experience,language,customandkinship"which the state presupposed. What was pernicious...Casey was saying, was that it had undermined such pieties and replaced them with a" rootlessindividualism".
    • Charles Covell,The Redefinition of Conservatism: Politics and Doctrine(1986), pp. 27-28
  • Liberalism is essentially the belief that there can be a reconciliation of alldifficultiesanddifferences,and since there can't, it is a misleading way to approach politics.

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  • That Liberalism may be a tendency towards something very different from itself, is a possibility in its nature. For it is something which tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. Our point of departure is more real to us than our destination; and the destination is likely to present a very different picture when arrived at, from the vaguer image formed in imagination. By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion ofgetting onto which the alternative is a hopeless apathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negation: the artificial, mechanised or brutalised control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos.
    • T. S. Eliot,The Idea of a Christian Society(London: Faber and Faber, 1939), pp. 15–16
  • In the sense in which Liberalism is contrasted withConservatism,both can be equally repellent: if the former can mean chaos, the latter can mean petrification. We are always faced both with the question 'what must be destroyed?' and with the question 'what must be preserved?' and neither Liberalism nor Conservatism, which are not philosophies and may be merely habits, is enough to guide us.
    • T. S. Eliot,The Idea of a Christian Society(London: Faber and Faber, 1939), p. 17
  • I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased byselfishness,so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as theEnglishbourgeoisie;and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper, particularly the Liberal,Corn Lawrepealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing exists in this world, except for the sake ofmoney,itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted.
  • Any liberal system must proceed from the assumption that freedom is one and indivisible and that elementary human freedom in all spheres of life must go hand in hand with political, religious, economic and spiritual freedom. The strategy ofcollectivistthinking has always been to split up this most essential and most universal of human values as a means of making inroads into the free system itself.

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  • I am a Liberal, because liberalism seems to me to mean faith in the people, and confidence that they will manage their own affairs far better than those affairs are likely to be managed for them by others.
    • Millicent Fawcett,quoted inWhy I Am a Liberal: Being Definitions and Personal Confessions of Faith by the Best Minds of the Liberal Party,ed. Andrew Reid (1885), p. 43
  • Liberalism, moreover, which currently plays a dominant role in the life ofEuropeanpeoples and states, is by no means to be understood as the system of popular freedom in general, but as a system in the special interest of quite specific elements ofsocietywhich are assembled in the commercial and industrial middle class. The liberal state in this conventional sense is the state which represents the interest of thissocial group.But that does not in any sense mean that it must also represent the interest of all other classes of the population or even only the interest of the true majority of the people.
    • Julius Fröbel,Theorie der Politik, als Ergebniss einer erneuerten Prüfung demokratischer Lehrmeinungen(2 vols., 1861–1864), Vol. I, p. 258, quoted in Theodore S. Hamerow,Social Foundations of German Unification, 1858–1871, Volume I: Ideas and Institutions(1969), p. 136
  • In theThirty Years' War... a third of the population ofcentral Europewere killed in a bloody struggle between differentChristianreligious sects, and the pragmatic part of liberalism was to takefinal ends[defined by religions] out ofpoliticaldiscussion... and to lower the sights of politics to defendlifeitself, and not "the good life"... as defined by a particular sect of a particular religion, and thereforetoleranceofdiversity,of people that don't believe the same thing that you do, has always been at the core of this pragmatic project to enable diverse populations to live with one another.

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The white liberal's offer to help has an air of condescension because it masks a profound existential investment in the continuation of the racist system. ~Lewis Gordon
  • It came to me a little while ago what we really are, we liberals. We demand reforms, we want to improve the situation of the underprivileged — why? To make them better off materially? Nuts. It's only to make ourselves feel lessguilty.We rend ourgarments,we're eager to show how willing we are to accept any outrageous demand so long as it'sblack,oryouthful,or put up by someone who thinks he's got a grievance. We want to appease everybody — you know what a liberal is? A liberal is a guy who walks out of the room when the fight starts.
  • Much ofBiko'senergy is devoted to criticizing the liberal in both the condescendingwhiteand the idiotic black forms. The black liberal is idiotic becauseblack peoplelack power in a white-controlled system. The white liberal, on the other hand, operates from the vantage point of having something—perhaps a great deal—to lose in the event of progressive social change. The white liberal's offer to help has an air of condescension because it masks a profound existential investment in the continuation ofthe racist system.Thus, the white liberal always insists on offering the theoretical or interpretive strategies against antiblackracism,but such strategies often act to preserve the need for white liberals as the most cherished members or overseers of values in their society. In Biko's words: "I am against the superior-inferior white-black stratification that makes the white man a perpetual teacher and the black a perpetual pupil (and a poor one at that.)"

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Liberalism regards it as desirable that only what the majority accepts should in fact be law, but it does not believe that this is therefore necessarily good law. Its aim, indeed, is to persuade the majority to observe certain principles. It accepts majority rule as a method of deciding, but not as an authority for what the decision ought to be. ~Friedrich Hayek
  • Liberalism seemed so obviously ethical. Liberals marched for peace, workers' rights, civil rights, and secularism. TheRepublican Partywas (as we saw it) the party of war, big business, racism, andevangelical Christianity.I could not understand how any thinking person would voluntarily embrace the party of evil. […] When I returned to America [from India], social conservatives no longer seemed so crazy.
  • The difference between a freeGovernmentand a Government which is not free is principally this—that a Government which is not free interferes with everything it can, and a free Government interferes with nothing except what it must. AdespoticGovernment tries to make everybody do what it wishes; a Liberal Government tries, as far as the safety of society will permit, to allow everybody to do as he wishes. It has been the tradition of the Liberal party consistently to maintain the doctrine of individual liberty. It is because they have done so that England is the place where people can do more what they please than in any other country in the world.
    • William Harcourt,speech in Oxford town hall (30 December 1872), quoted inThe Times(31 December 1872), p. 5
  • Liberalism is a doctrine about what the law ought to be, democracy a doctrine about the manner of determining the law. Liberalism regards it as desirable that only what the majority accepts should in fact be law, but it does not believe that this is therefore necessarily good law. Its aim, indeed, is to persuade the majority to observe certain principles. It accepts majority rule as a method of deciding, but not as an authority for what the decision ought to be. To the doctrinaire democrat the fact that the majority wants something is sufficient ground for regarding it as good; for him the will of the majority determines not only what is law but what is good law.

  • Liberalism, whichLuxemburgcalled by its more appropriate name— “opportunism” —is an integral component ofcapitalism.When the citizens grow restive, it will soften and decry capitalism’s excesses. But capitalism, Luxemburg argued, is an enemy that can never be appeased. Liberal reforms are used to stymie resistance and then later, when things grow quiet, are revoked on the inevitable road to capitalist slavery. The last century of labor struggles in the United States provides a case study for proof of Luxemburg’s observation.

    The political, cultural and judicial system in acapitaliststate is centered around the protection ofproperty rights.And, asAdam Smithpointed out, when civil government “is instituted for the security of property, [it] is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” The capitalist system is gamed from the start. And this makes Luxemburg extremely relevant as corporate capital, now freed from all constraints, reconfigures our global economy, including theUnited States’, into a ruthless form ofneofeudalism.

  • A liberal will defend to the death your right to agree with her. Disagree with her, and she will call the police.
  • It is a false liberalism that interprets itself into the government operation of commercialbusiness.Every step of bureaucratizing of the business of our country poisons the very roots of liberalism -- that is, politicalequality,free speech,free assembly,free press,andequality of opportunity.It is the road not to more liberty, but to less liberty. Liberalism should be found not striving to spreadbureaucracybut striving to set bounds to it. True liberalism seeks all legitimate freedom first in the confident belief that without such freedom the pursuit of all other blessings and benefits is vain. That belief is the foundation of all American progress, political as well as economic. Liberalism is a force truly of the spirit, a force proceeding from the deep realization that economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved. Even if governmental conduct of business could give us moreefficiencyinstead of less efficiency, the fundamental objection to it would remain unaltered and unabated. It would destroy political equality. It would increase rather than decrease abuse andcorruption.It would stifle initiative and invention. It would undermine the development of leadership. It would cramp and cripple the mental and spiritual energies of our people. It would extinguish equality andopportunity.It would dry up the spirit of liberty and progress. For these reasons primarily it must be resisted. For a hundred and fifty years liberalism has found its true spirit in theAmerican system,not in theEuropeansystems.
  • A Liberal is one who seeks to secure for everyone the same rights, political, social or religious, which he claims for himself.
    • George Holyoake,quoted in Ian Bradley,The Optimists: Themes and Personalities in Victorian Liberalism(1980), p. 76

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  • But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.

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  • Tarian:A liberal is just the opposite of a conservative.
    Herrod:(Entering, with drinks.) And a conservative is a liberal who just got mugged.
    Tarian:Oh, Rex. Thanks. For the drinks and for the definition. But couldn't you also saya liberal is a conservative who just got arrested?
  • A liberal is one who says that it's all right for an 18-year-old girl to perform in apornographicmovieas long as she gets paid theminimum wage.
  • When then is liberalism correctly understood? Liberalism is not an exclusvely political term. It can be applied to a prison reform, to an economic order, to a theology. Within the political framework, the question is not (as in ademocracy) “Who should rule?” but “How should rule be exercised?” The reply is “Regardless of who rules—amonarch,anelite,amajority,or a benevolentdictator—governments should be exercised in such a way that each citizen enjoys the greatest amount of personal liberty.” The limit of liberty is obviously the common good. But, admittedly, the common good (material as well as immaterial) is not easily defined, for it rests on value judgments. Its definition is therefore always somewhat arbitrary. Speed limits curtail freedom in the interests of the common good. Is there a watertight case for forty, forty-five, or fifty miles an hour? Certainly not.... Freedom is thus the only postulate of liberalism—of genuine liberalism. If, therefore, democracy is liberal, the life, the whims, the interests of the minority will be just as respected as those of the majority. Yet surely not only a democracy, but amonarchy(absolute or otherwise) or anaristocratic(elitist) regime can be liberal. In fact, the affinity between democracy and liberalism is not at all greater than that between, say, monarchy and liberalism or a mixed government and liberalism. (People under theAustrianmonarchy, which was not only symbolic but an effective mixed government, were not less free than those inCanada,to name only one example.)

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  • [L]iberalism has been, in the last four centuries, the outstanding doctrine of Western Civilisation.
    • Harold Laski,The Rise of European Liberalism: An Essay in Interpretation[1936] (1962), p. 5
  • Liberalism itself is, on all matters connected with Church and Education, only a kind of corporate and 'respectable' ungodliness.
    • Henry Liddon,letter to C. T. Redington (January 13, 1879), inJohn Octavius Johnston,Life and Letters of Henry Parry Liddon(London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1904), p. 229
  • As to the having and possessing of things, teach them to part with what they have, easily and freely to their friends, and let them find by experience that the mostliberalhas always the most plenty, with esteem and commendation to boot, and they will quickly learn to practise it.
  • Covetousness,and the desire of having in our possession, and under our dominion, more than we have need of, being the root of allevil,should be early and carefully weeded out, and the contrary quality of a readiness to impart to others, implanted. This should be encourag'd by great commendation and credit, and constantly taking care that he loses nothing by hisliberality.
    • John Locke,Some Thoughts Concerning Education(1693) Sec. 110
  • Let him sensibly perceive, that the kindness he shews to others, is no illhusbandryfor himself; but that it brings a return in kindness both from those that receive it, and those who look on. Make this a contest among children, who shall out-do one another in this way: and by this means, by a constant practise, children having made it easy to themselves to part with what they have, good nature may be settled in them into a habit, and they may take pleasure, and pique themselves in beingkind, liberal and civil,to others.
    • John Locke,Some Thoughts Concerning Education(1693) Sec. 110

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  • Liberalism rejectsideologicalstruggle and stands for unprincipled peace, thus giving rise to a decadent,Philistineattitude.
  • Liberalism, as a set of ideals, is still viable, and even compelling to Western men. That is one reason why it has become a common denominator ofAmerican political rhetoric;but there is another reason. The ideals of liberalism have been divorced from any realities of modern social structure that might serve as the means of their realization. Everybody can easily agree on general ends; it is more difficult to agree on means and the relevance of various means to the ends articulated. The detachment of liberalism from the facts of a going society make it an excellent mask for those who do not, cannot, or will not do what would have to be done to realize its ideals.
  • Let's run it on down. White males are most responsible for thedestruction of human lifeandenvironmentonthe planettoday. Yet who is controlling the supposedrevolutionto change all that? White males (yes, yes, even with their pasty fingers back in black and brown pies again). It just could make one a bit uneasy. It seems obvious that a legitimate revolution must be led by, made by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, and whitewomen–with men relating to that as best they can. A genuine Left doesn't consider anyone's suffering irrelevant, or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm ofcapitalisteconomy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom (and functioning as objectified prizes or "coin" as well). Goodbye to all that.
    • Robin Morgan,"Goodbye to All That" (1970) inGoing Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist(1977), p 123
  • Define it as we may, faith inProgresshas been the mainspring of Liberalism in all its schools and branches.
    • John Morley,'Democracy and Reaction',Miscellanies: Fourth Series(1908), p. 293
  • Respect for the dignity and worth of the individual is its root. It stands for pursuit of social good against class interest or dynastic interest. It stands for the subjection to human judgment of all claims of externalauthority,whether in anorganised Church,or in more loosely gathered societies of believers, or in books held sacred. In law-making it does not neglect the higher characteristics of human nature, it attends to them first. In executive administration, thoughjudge,gaoler,and perhaps thehangmanwill be indispensable, still mercy is counted a wise supplement to terror.
  • Liberalism cannot be defined in the abstract in any helpful way. Liberalism inpoliticscan best be defined in terms of specific issues. Political liberalism should also be defined in terms of objectives. A major objective is the protection of the economic weak and doing it within the framework of aprivate-propertyeconomy. The liberal, emphasizing thecivilandproperty rightsof the individual, insists that the individual must remain so supreme as to make the state his servant.

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  • Now by Liberalism I mean false liberty of thought, or the exercise of thought upon matters, in which, from the constitution of the human mind, thought cannot be brought to any successful issue, and therefore is out of place. Among such matters are first principles of whatever kind; and of these the most sacred and momentous are especially to be reckoned the truths of Revelation. Liberalism then is the mistake of subjecting to human judgment those revealed doctrines which are in their nature beyond and independent of it, and of claiming to determine on intrinsic grounds the truth and value of propositions which rest for their reception simply on the external authority of the Divine Word.

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  • Hungarywas led tobankruptcyby a government of formercommunistspursuing liberal policy. This example strengthens the conviction that in fact there is no such thing as a liberal: a liberal is nothing more than a communist with auniversitydegree. If we had taken their advice, right now Hungary would be in the intensive care ward, with the tubes ofIMFandBrusselscredit attached to every limb. And the fingers on the valves regulating the flow of credit would belong toGeorge Soros.This is no exaggeration.

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  • Too many well-meaning liberals are clinging with ten fingernails to the idea that their institutions are robust enough to withstandfascism.They believe, because the belief is soothing, that the marketplace of ideas cares about the value, durability, and quality of its wares rather than how shiny the packaging is, how catchy the jingle, how many times it shows up in your peripheral brand awareness until it’s the one you reach for on the shelf.

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  • Socialandeconomic inequalitiesare to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society.

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Liberalism, however, means "the state for itself, and every man for himself." That is a formula impossible to follow unless one is willing to take the liberal course, which is to say one thing while being dead set against its opposite, but in the end to let the opposite take over anyway. ~Oswald Spengler
  • The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hopes that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into aparliamentary debateand permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlastingdiscussion.Dictatorshipis the opposite of discussion.
    • Carl Schmitt,Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty(1985), translated by George Schwab, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
  • I have yet to meet a liberal who can withstand the attrition of prolonged discussion of the inessentials.
  • It is an inevitable mark of what the late SirEdwyn Hoskynsused to call the ‘tyranny of liberalism’ that the liberal is not only convinced that he is right; he is also convinced that other people secretly agree with him—how could they do otherwise?—and are only restrained from saying so by unworthy motives arising from worldly prudence, material interest, and so forth.
    • C. H. Smyth,'The Importance of Church Attendance' inThe Recall to Religion(1937), p. 120
  • Among the political attitudes that prevail inGermanytoday, onlysocialismhas the potentiality of inner value and integrity.Liberalism is for the simple-minded, for those who like to chat a great deal about things they can never achieve.That is how weGermansare; we cannot possibly be like theEnglish,we can only be caricatures of them—and that we have been often enough. Every man for himself: that is an English idea. Every man for every other man: that is the Prussian way. Liberalism, however, means "the state for itself, and every man for himself." That is a formula impossible to follow unless one is willing to take the liberal course, which is to say one thing while being dead set against its opposite, but in the end to let the opposite take over anyway.
  • We must face the fact that, though the freeintelligenceand the spirit of community are at once the goal and an essential means, they may be not only ineffectual but actually harmful, unless they are combined with a full measure of that hot indignation againsttyranny,that devoted service in the struggle for the new order, which is characteristic of the best minds of the politicalLeft.On the other hand, the political Left, if it is to capture the imagination and allegiance of the people of this country and sweep them forward to victory, must, I believe, learn a more liberal spirit. I mean, of course, liberal not in the political but in the cultural sense, namely, loyalty to the free critical intelligence and respect for the human individual.

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  • Liberalism only works when citizens see and treat each other as individuals with equal value and rights regardless of theirgender,religion,sexual orientationorskin color.The famous dream ofMartin Luther Kingseems almost painfully antiquated these days.
  • As Part IV of this book will chart, thefinancial and economic crisis of 2007–2012morphed between 2013 and 2017 into a comprehensive political and geopolitical crisis of the post–cold warorder. And the obvious political implication should not be dodged.Conservatismmight have been disastrous as a crisis-fighting doctrine, but events since 2012 suggest that the triumph ofcentristliberalism was false too. As the remarkable escalation of the debate aboutinequalityin theUnited Stateshas starkly exposed, centrist liberals struggle to give convincing answers for the long-term problems ofmoderncapitalistdemocracy.The crisis added to those preexisting tensions of increasinginequalityanddisenfranchisement,and the dramatic crisis-fighting measures adopted since 2008, for all their short-term effectiveness, have their own, negative side effects. On that score the conservatives were right. Meanwhile, the geopolitical challenges thrown up, not by the violent turmoil of theMiddle Eastor “Slavic”backwardness but by the successful advance ofglobalization,have not gone away. They have intensified. And though the “Western alliance” is still in being, it is increasingly uncoordinated. In 2014Japanlurched toward confrontation withChina.And theEU—the colossus that “does not do geopolitics” — “sleepwalked” intoconflict with RussiaoverUkraine.Meanwhile, in the wake of the botched handling of theeurozone crisis,Europewitnessed a dramatic mobilization on both Left and Right. But rather than being taken as an expression of the vitality of European democracy in the face of deplorable governmental failure, however disagreeable that expression may in some cases be, the new politics of the postcrisis period were demonized as “populism,”tarred with the brush of the 1930s or attributed to the malign influence ofRussia.The forces of the status quo gathered in the Eurogroup set out to contain and then to neutralize theleft-winggovernments elected inGreeceandPortugalin 2015. Backed up by the newly enhanced powers of the fully activatedECB,this left no doubt about the robustness of theeurozone.All the more pressing were the questions about the limits of democracy in the EU and its lopsidedness. Against the Left, preying on its reasonableness, the brutal tactics of containment did their job. Against the Right they did not, asBrexit,PolandandHungarywere to prove.
    • Adam ToozeCrashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World(2018)
  • The key-note of all Liberalism [is] the paramount and unlimited authority of popular control.
    • George Trevelyan,lecture (1871), quoted in Brian Harrison,Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England, 1815–1872(1971), p. 249

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  • I never use the wordsDemocratsandRepublicans.It's liberals andAmericans.
    • James G. Watt,in a statement of November 1981, quoted inNew York Times(10 October 1983); also quoted inEnergy and Environment: The Unfinished Business(1986) by Congressional Quarterly, Inc., p. 91
  • What bothers me about today's "liberals" is this: through the ages, those called liberal fought to take the power away from thekingsand theemperorsand to give it to theparliaments;now it is the "liberals" who are anxious to give more and more power to the executive, at the expense of the legislative branch.

See also

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Social and political philosophy
Ideologies Anarchism⦿Aristocratic Radicalism(Nietzsche•Brandes...)⦿Autarchism⦿Ba'athism(•Aflaq•al-Assad•Hussein)⦿Communism⦿ (Neo-)Confucianism⦿Conservatism⦿Constitutionalism⦿Dark Enlightenment⦿Environmentalism⦿Fascism(•Islamo-•Eco-•Francoism...)vs.Nazism⦿Feminism(•Anarcha-•Radical•Gender-critical•Second-wave...)⦿Formalism/(Neo-)cameralism⦿Freudo-Marxism⦿Gaddafism/Third International Theory⦿Legalism⦿Leninism/Vanguardism⦿Juche(•Kim Il-sung•Kim Jong Il•Kim Jong Un...)⦿Liberalism⦿Libertarianism/Laissez-faireCapitalism⦿Maoism⦿Marxism⦿Mohism⦿Republicanism⦿Social democracy⦿Socialism⦿Stalinism⦿Straussianism⦿Syndicalism⦿Xi Jinping thought⦿New Monasticism(•MacIntyre•Dreher...)
Modalities Absolutismvs.Social constructionism/Relativism⦿Autarky/Autonomyvs.Heteronomy⦿Authoritarianism/Totalitarianism⦿Colonialismvs.Imperialism⦿Communitarianismvs.Liberalism⦿Elitismvs.Populism/Majoritarianism/Egalitarianism⦿Individualismvs.Collectivism⦿Nationalismvs.Cosmopolitanism⦿Particularismvs.Universalism⦿Modernism/Progressivismvs.Postmodernism⦿Reactionism/Traditionalismvs.Futurism/Transhumanism
Concepts Alienation⦿Anarcho-tyranny⦿Anomie⦿Authority⦿Conquest's Laws of Politics⦿Duty⦿Eugenics⦿Elite⦿Elite theory⦿Emancipation⦿Equality⦿Freedom⦿Government⦿Hegemony⦿Hierarchy⦿Iron law of oligarchy⦿Justice⦿Law⦿Monopoly⦿Natural law⦿Noblesse oblige⦿Norms⦿Obedience⦿Peace⦿Pluralism⦿Polyarchy⦿Power⦿Propaganda⦿Property⦿Revolt⦿Rebellion⦿Revolution⦿Rights⦿Ruling class⦿Social contract⦿Social inequality⦿Society⦿State⦿Tocqueville effect⦿Totalitarian democracy⦿War⦿Utopia
Government Aristocracy⦿Autocracy⦿Bureaucracy⦿Dictatorship⦿Democracy⦿Meritocracy⦿Monarchy⦿Ochlocracy⦿Oligarchy⦿Plutocracy⦿Technocracy⦿Theocracy⦿Tyranny


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