Folks who want to accelerate their learning journey here would do well to pick up Helena Rosenblatt’s excellent recent history of liberalism.
Far from a novel problem for contemporary liberals, contestation over precisely what it means to be liberal and worries about that meaning getting “lost” have been there almost from the start.
Personally, I find this comforting. Part of the liberal tradition is to go through cycles of forgetting and reinheritance. We’ve done this before, we can do it again 💪💪
Looking forward to hearing more. One thing that isn't clear to me - perhaps it's obvious - is the connection between liberalism and the liberal arts - can you spell it out?
I look forward to reading more. It's hard to understand that anyone in 2025 would consider "socialism" liberal. Of course, socialism (like Trump and MAGA) seems to be a Rohrschach test - it is whatever the observer wants it to be. I look forward to more exposition on the liberal search for balance between forced collectivism and extreme individualism.
Socialism isn’t just one thing. To say otherwise is has contributed to the shifting of the Overton Window in the past decades to the point where if someone says people should have access to free healthcare or education they get described as raging communists. To put mamdani in the same sentence as Trump and Farage is to engage in similar obfuscation. There is social democracy which is different from democratic socialism. The word democracy has some idea of freedom built into it.
Appreciate the thought you have been putting into this, and I’m relieved I’m not the only reader who found the sentence lumping Mamdani and Trump provocative. Eager to see more of the authors thinking on this without negative judgment about those of us asking!
Thank you - subscribed to support this vital work. Humble suggestion- I’d love to see some arguments for, and programs to nurture, classical liberalism for non-elites. If this work is just consumed, and engaged with, by the ivory tower and technocrat-class, it will fail…
Glad to see there are a few classical liberals left
Subscribed :) I'm excited to see what you have in store.
insta-subscribed!
I'm here for this.
This is wonderful! Subscribed!
yay!
Folks who want to accelerate their learning journey here would do well to pick up Helena Rosenblatt’s excellent recent history of liberalism.
Far from a novel problem for contemporary liberals, contestation over precisely what it means to be liberal and worries about that meaning getting “lost” have been there almost from the start.
Personally, I find this comforting. Part of the liberal tradition is to go through cycles of forgetting and reinheritance. We’ve done this before, we can do it again 💪💪
Subscribed, excited to see what comes of this.
Nailed it! How to make these principles obvious agian?
Looking forward to hearing more. One thing that isn't clear to me - perhaps it's obvious - is the connection between liberalism and the liberal arts - can you spell it out?
How on earth is Mamdani illiberal? 🤯 And put in the same sentence as Trump & Nigel Farage?
He’s not a classical liberal.
His policies are hardly repressive. Or similar in anyway to Trump or Farage.
you can expect that a common theme of this substack will be why and how socialism is illiberal (in practice, as well as definitionally) :)
I look forward to reading more. It's hard to understand that anyone in 2025 would consider "socialism" liberal. Of course, socialism (like Trump and MAGA) seems to be a Rohrschach test - it is whatever the observer wants it to be. I look forward to more exposition on the liberal search for balance between forced collectivism and extreme individualism.
Socialism isn’t just one thing. To say otherwise is has contributed to the shifting of the Overton Window in the past decades to the point where if someone says people should have access to free healthcare or education they get described as raging communists. To put mamdani in the same sentence as Trump and Farage is to engage in similar obfuscation. There is social democracy which is different from democratic socialism. The word democracy has some idea of freedom built into it.
Appreciate the thought you have been putting into this, and I’m relieved I’m not the only reader who found the sentence lumping Mamdani and Trump provocative. Eager to see more of the authors thinking on this without negative judgment about those of us asking!
Thank you - subscribed to support this vital work. Humble suggestion- I’d love to see some arguments for, and programs to nurture, classical liberalism for non-elites. If this work is just consumed, and engaged with, by the ivory tower and technocrat-class, it will fail…
And Techno Feudalism?