Download or read book The Conscience of a Liberal written by Paul Krugman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-01-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The most consistent and courageous—and unapologetic—liberal partisan in American journalism." —Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books In this "clear, provocative" (Boston Globe) New York Times bestseller, Paul Krugman, today's most widely read economist, examines the past eighty years of American history, from the reforms that tamed the harsh inequality of the Gilded Age and the 1920s to the unraveling of that achievement and the reemergence of immense economic and political inequality since the 1970s. Seeking to understand both what happened to middle-class America and what it will take to achieve a "new New Deal," Krugman has created his finest book to date, a "stimulating manifesto" offering "a compelling historical defense of liberalism and a clarion call for Americans to retake control of their economic destiny" (Publishers Weekly). "As Democrats seek a rationale not merely for returning to power, but for fundamentally changing—or changing back—the relationship between America's government and its citizens, Mr. Krugman's arguments will prove vital in the months and years ahead." —Peter Beinart, New York Times

Download or read book Liberalism written by Michael Freeden and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Freeden explores the concept of liberalism, one of the longest-standing and central political theories and ideologies. Combining a variety of approaches, he distinguishes between liberalism as a political movement, as a system of ideas, and as a series of ethical and philosophical principles.

Download or read book Listen Liberal written by Thomas Frank and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of What's the Matter With Kansas, a scathing look at the standard-bearers of liberal politics -- a book that asks: what's the matter with Democrats? It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming. With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, Frank's Listen, Liberal lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years. A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality. In this critical election year, Frank recalls the Democrats to their historic goals-the only way to reverse the ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor in America.

Download or read book Liberals and Communism written by Frank A. Warren and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although deconstruction has become a popular catchword, as an intellectual movement it has never entirely caught on within the university. For some in the academy, deconstruction, and Jacques Derrida in particular, are responsible for the demise of accountability in the study of literature. Countering these facile dismissals of Derrida and deconstruction, Herman Rapaport explores the incoherence that has plagued critical theory since the 1960s and the resulting legitimacy crisis in the humanities. Against the backdrop of a rich, informed discussion of Derrida's writings -- and how they have been misconstrued by critics and admirers alike -- The Theory Mess investigates the vicissitudes of Anglo-American criticism over the past thirty years and proposes some possibilities for reform.

Download or read book The Lost History of Liberalism written by Helena Rosenblatt and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Lost History of Liberalism challenges our most basic assumptions about a political creed that has become a rallying cry - and a term of derision - in today's increasingly divided public square. Taking readers from ancient Rome to today, Helena Rosenblatt traces the evolution of the words "liberal" and "liberalism," revealing the heated debates that have taken place over their meaning. In this timely and provocative book, Rosenblatt debunks the popular myth of liberalism as a uniquely Anglo-American tradition centered on individual rights. It was only during the Cold War and America's growing world hegemony that liberalism was refashioned into an American ideology focused so strongly on individual freedoms."--

Download or read book Liberalism for a New Century written by Neil Jumonville and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-06-04 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American liberalism today is in a state of confusion and disarray, with the "L word" widely considered a term of derision. By examining both the historical past and the fractious present, Liberalism for a New Century restores a proud political tradition and carves out a formidable defense of its philosophical tenets. This manifesto for a New Liberalism issues an urgent and cogent call for the most important rethinking of its values since the late 1960s, when conservatives reenergized themselves after Barry Goldwater’s infamous loss. The essays in this volume, most of them never before published, are written by a leading group of historians, journalists, and public intellectuals. Some of the nation’s most highly respected liberal minds explore such topics as the classical liberal tradition, postmodernism’s challenge to the American "Enlightenment," the civil rights era, the influence of twentieth-century radicals on American liberalism, the 1950s, tolerance, the cold war, and whether liberalism should have a large and aggressive vision. One essay considers liberalism in Iran and what American liberals might learn from this movement. Fast-paced and encompassing such hot-button issues as the family and religion, here are ringside-seat arguments between people who don’t often get to engage with one another: right-leaning liberals like Peter Berkowitz and John Patrick Diggins, and leftier liberals like Michael Tomasky and Mona Harrington. The result is a lively and stimulating collection that articulates a clear-minded alternative to the conservative ascendancy in American history and offers a timely and essential contribution to the growing national debate.

Download or read book The Liberal Tradition in American Politics written by David F. Ericson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1999. This volume explores the full range and depth of the liberal tradition in America and how it has been perceived by political theorists and historians. The contributors weigh the various paradigm shifts in our understanding of American political development according to consensus, polarity and multiple traditions. They break new ground by taking into account African-American and proslavery thought, gender and identity politics, citizenship in the Reconstruction and Progressive eras, and models of SupremeCourt decision-making. The Liberal Tradition in America questions the effect of viewing American history through these paradigms on the progress of research, and moves the emphasis in research from the development of political ideas to the development of political institutions

Download or read book Liberal Freedom written by Eric MacGilvray and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We seem to be losing the ability to talk to each other about – and despite – our political differences. The liberal tradition, with its emphasis on open-mindedness, toleration, and inclusion, is ideally suited to respond to this challenge. Yet liberalism is often seen today as a barrier to constructive dialogue: narrowly focused on individual rights, indifferent to the communal sources of human well-being, and deeply implicated in structures of economic and social domination. This book provides a novel defense of liberalism that weaves together a commitment to republican self-government, an emphasis on the value of unregulated choice, and an appreciation of how hard it is to strike a balance between them. By treating freedom rather than justice as the central liberal value this important book, critical to the times, provides an indispensable resource for constructive dialogue in a time of political polarization.

Download or read book Public and Private Morality written by Stuart Hampshire and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1978-10-31 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection of essays by well-known British and American philosophers on the moral principles by which public policies and political decisions should be judged: does effective political action necessarily involve and justify actions which the individual would regard as unacceptable in "private" morality?

Download or read book Liberal Revival Now A Moral and Practical Case for a 21st Century Back to Basics Liberalism written by TaraElla and published by TaraElla. This book was released on 2017-02-20 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does liberal mean? There can be no agreement, it seems. Still, if liberals, left-liberals and right-liberals alike, share something in common, it's the fundamental belief in liberty. Liberalism is unlike any other ideology, in that it does not seek to use government to social engineer a certain type of society. At the heart of liberalism, I believe, is the value that all people are morally equal, i.e. they have an equal right to be moral actors. And in the clear absence of a morally perfect person anywhere in the world, this is simply the only moral and logical position to take. Liberals can be personally conservative, progressive or radical, but they do not use the government to engineer a conservative, progressive or radical society. With the great confusion surrounding what liberalism is nowadays, and the lack of a firm and clear meaning of what this ideology is among the general public, it is unsurprising that liberalism, even with its great cannon including many great statements and thinkers going all the way back to Mills and Locke, is not exactly the most appealing idea to today's young intellectuals. And yet, this is a sad situation, one that does not bode well for our future. Liberalism is the very embodiment of the enlightenment, and the great foundation on which society can achieve a state of peace and rational progress. This book will demonstrate why liberalism remains the best political ideology, for both the culturally conservative and progressive alike. Moreover, liberalism is also a cultural attitude, one where freedom of speech, respect of each other’s moral consciences, and rational debate are encouraged. A revival of liberalism would also mean a revival of these values, all important attributes of an adaptive, healthy, forward-looking society. This book will discuss ways in which liberalism can be reinvigorated for modern and future society.

Download or read book Political Liberalism written by John Rawls and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-24 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in A Theory of Justice but changes its philosophical interpretation in a fundamental way. That previous work assumed what Rawls calls a "well-ordered society," one that is stable and relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad agreement about what constitutes the good life. Yet in modern democratic society a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctrines—religious, philosophical, and moral—coexist within the framework of democratic institutions. Recognizing this as a permanent condition of democracy, Rawls asks how a stable and just society of free and equal citizens can live in concord when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines? This edition includes the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," which outlines Rawls' plans to revise Political Liberalism, which were cut short by his death. "An extraordinary well-reasoned commentary on A Theory of Justice...a decisive turn towards political philosophy." —Times Literary Supplement

Download or read book Liberalism written by Earl A. Reitan and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2003 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberalism: Time-Tested Principles for the Twenty-First Century offers a multi-dimensional definition of Liberalism and calls upon American Liberals to rally behind their principles. Key sentences: The principal concern of Liberalism has always been good government, which Liberals regard as an essential element of a good society. Liberals have a tradition of Nationalism. If they wish to flourish again, Liberals must find leaders who can win the confidence of those ordinary Americans who consider the well-being of America as their primary concern. Bill Clinton, and his counterpart in Britain, Tony Blair, were on the right track. They had grasped the essential principles of Liberalism, and they made an effort of avoid the contentious, special-interest issues that had become attached to the liberal message. My book is a work of passion, and I hope it arouses a similar passion in others, because without passion there will be no action.

Download or read book Not Thinking like a Liberal written by Raymond Geuss and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a compelling meditation on the ideas that shape our lives, one of the world’s most provocative and creative philosophers explains how his eccentric early years influenced his lifelong critique of liberalism. Liberalism is so amorphous and pervasive that for most people in the West it is background noise, the natural state of affairs. But there are nooks and crannies in every society where the prevailing winds don’t blow. Raymond Geuss grew up some distance from the cultural mainstream and recounts here the unusual perspective he absorbed: one in which liberal capitalism was synonymous with moral emptiness and political complacency. Not Thinking like a Liberal is a concise tour of diverse intellectual currents—from the Counter-Reformation and communism to pragmatism and critical theory—that shaped Geuss’s skeptical stance toward liberalism. The bright young son of a deeply Catholic steelworker, Geuss was admitted in 1959 to an unusual boarding school on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Outside was Eisenhower’s America. Inside Geuss was schooled by Hungarian priests who tried to immunize students against the twin dangers of oppressive communism and vapid liberal capitalism. From there Geuss went on to university in New York in the early days of the Vietnam War and to West Germany, where critical theory was experiencing a major revival. This is not a repeatable journey. In tracing it, Geuss reminds us of the futility of abstracting lessons from context and of seeking a universal view from nowhere. At the same time, he examines the rise and fall of major political theories of the past sixty years. An incisive thinker attuned to both the history and the future of ideas, Geuss looks beyond the horrors of authoritarianism and the shallow freedom of liberalism to glimpse a world of genuinely new possibilities.

Download or read book Liberalism written by Jan Narveson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2000-12-31 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No theory is more passionately and widely defined, or decried, than is liberalism in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. But what is this theory, on which so much ink is spilled? This collection of original essays by leading specialists in political philosophy, legal theory, and economics offers answers to that question, by exploring the theoretical commitments of liberals and some of the practical implications of their view. Among the topics explored is the distinction between liberalism and conservatism, and the degree to which liberals must be committed to neutrality, individualism, equality, freedom, and a contractarian theory of justification. The practical implications of liberalism are further examined by considerations of the proper role of the liberal state in undertaking egalitarian redistribution, the provision of public goods, and retributive punishment. The papers assembled by Narveson and Dimock will be of benefit to anyone working in the areas of political philosophy, political theory, or political economics.

Download or read book Liberalism and Empire written by Uday Singh Mehta and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-06-29 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We take liberalism to be a set of ideas committed to political rights and self-determination, yet it also served to justify an empire built on political domination. Uday Mehta argues that imperialism, far from contradicting liberal tenets, in fact stemmed from liberal assumptions about reason and historical progress. Confronted with unfamiliar cultures such as India, British liberals could only see them as backward or infantile. In this, liberals manifested a narrow conception of human experience and ways of being in the world. Ironically, it is in the conservative Edmund Burke—a severe critic of Britain's arrogant, paternalistic colonial expansion—that Mehta finds an alternative and more capacious liberal vision. Shedding light on a fundamental tension in liberal theory, Liberalism and Empire reaches beyond post-colonial studies to revise our conception of the grand liberal tradition and the conception of experience with which it is associated.

Download or read book Predisposed written by John R. Hibbing and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buried in many people and operating largely outside the realm of conscious thought are forces inclining us toward liberal or conservative political convictions. Our biology predisposes us to see and understand the world in different ways, not always reason and the careful consideration of facts. These predispositions are in turn responsible for a significant portion of the political and ideological conflict that marks human history. With verve and wit, renowned social scientists John Hibbing, Kevin Smith, and John Alford—pioneers in the field of biopolitics—present overwhelming evidence that people differ politically not just because they grew up in different cultures or were presented with different information. Despite the oft-heard longing for consensus, unity, and peace, the universal rift between conservatives and liberals endures because people have diverse psychological, physiological, and genetic traits. These biological differences influence much of what makes people who they are, including their orientations to politics. Political disputes typically spring from the assumption that those who do not agree with us are shallow, misguided, uninformed, and ignorant. Predisposed suggests instead that political opponents simply experience, process, and respond to the world differently. It follows, then, that the key to getting along politically is not the ability of one side to persuade the other side to see the error of its ways but rather the ability of each side to see that the other is different, not just politically, but physically. Predisposed will change the way you think about politics and partisan conflict. As a bonus, the book includes a "Left/Right 20 Questions" game to test whether your predispositions lean liberal or conservative.

Download or read book Liberalism and American Identity written by Patrick M. Garry and published by Kent State University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: His examination of the liberal ideology and tradition in American politics reveals not only the nation's liberal identity, but also the conservative tendency to label liberalism "un-American" as a means to circumvent discussion of social problems. Garry defines liberalism, through historical examples and the beliefs and leadership of prominent Americans, namely Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John Kennedy. He then applies these principles of liberalism to a discussion of current politics and the problems of crime, poverty, and national defense. Although arguing that the conservative attack during the 1980s greatly misrepresented the American liberal tradition, Garry also acknowledges that changes within accepted liberal doctrines during the 1960s and 1970s led to a deviation of contemporary liberalism from its roots.