Liberalism For A New Century

"Here, finally, the collection we've been waiting for--thoughtful and lively essays on the relevance of liberalism for this new century, by some of its keenest observers."--Robert B. Reich, Professor of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

"Here, finally, the collection we've been waiting for—thoughtful and lively essays on the relevance of liberalism for this new century, by some of its keenest observers."—Robert B. Reich, Professor of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

What are the appropriate public policies for America as it approaches the coming century? The signs are all around. A market-liberal revolution is sweeping the planet, from Eastern Europe to Latin America to Asia, where governments are selling off state enterprises, cutting taxes, deregulating business, and showing new respect for property rights and freedom of choice. The two dozen essays in this book discuss how to bring the market-liberal revolution to the United States and explain how for-profit companies will revolutionize education, how deregulation of medical care can lower prices, how America can save $150 billion a year in military spending, how property rights can fix the environment, how deregulation and free trade produce prosperity, how competition produces health and safety, how America must deal with nuclear proliferation, how we can balance the budget without raising taxes, how the poverty and welfare trap can be ended, and how the inner cities can become livable again. This blueprint for reform is the alternative to both the status quo and the calls for even more government interference in our personal and economic activities. Any viable agenda for the 21st century must recognize the truth that all central planning, whether for education, medical care, or the environment, will only end in failure. Market Liberalism presents a new vision for American government, a positive, optimistic vision rooted in the principles of the Founders and suited to the challenges of the 21st century. It offers the promise of a free, prosperous, and pluralistic society for America and the world.

Rethinking Liberalism for the 21st Century offers an indispensable reexamination of the life, work, and interventions of a prominent liberal political theorist of the 20th century: Judith Shklar. Drawing on published and unpublished sources including Shklar’s correspondence, lecture notes, and other manuscripts, Giunia Gatta presents a fresh theoretical interpretation of Shklar’s liberalism as philosophically and politically radical. Beginning with a thorough reconstruction of Shklar’s life and her interest in political theory, Gatta turns her attention to examining the tension between Shklar’s critique of the term "modernity" and her passion for Enlightenment thinkers, including Rousseau and Hegel. In the second part of the book, Gatta roots Shklar’s liberalism of permanent minorities in her work in the history of political thought, and highlights this contribution as a fundamental recasting of liberalism as the political philosophy of outsiders. She makes a compelling argument for a liberalism of permanent minorities that refuses to stand on the ground of firm foundations and, instead, is oriented by complex understandings of cruelty and fear. Rethinking Liberalism for the 21st Century is a much-needed reorientation of traditional liberal policies, allowing for a more meaningful intervention in many contemporary debates. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of political theory, the history of political thought and ideas, philosophy, international relations, and political science in general.

"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."--

'Votes should be weighed, not counted', Nineteenth-century liberals argued. This study analyzes parliamentary suffrage debates in England, France and Germany, showing that liberals throughout Europe used a distinctive political language, 'the discourse of capacity', to limit political participation. This language defined liberals, and they used it to define and limit full citizenship. The rise of consumer culture at the end of the century drove the discourse of capacity from politics, but it survives today in education and the professions.

Extricating liberalism from the haze of anti-modernist and anti-European caricature, this book traces the role of liberal philosophy in the building of a new nation. It examines the role of toleration, rights, and mediation in the postcolony. Through the biographies of four Filipino scholar-bureaucrats—Camilo Osias, Salvador Araneta, Carlos P. Romulo, and Salvador P. Lopez—Lisandro E. Claudio argues that liberal thought served as the grammar of Filipino democracy in the 20th century. By looking at various articulations of liberalism in pedagogy, international affairs, economics, and literature, Claudio not only narrates an obscured history of the Philippine state, he also argues for a new liberalism rooted in the postcolonial experience, a timely intervention considering current developments in politics in Southeast Asia.

The book rediscovers liberal modernity as the master process and destination of Western civilization, and its anti-liberal adversaries, notably conservatism, as the ghosts of a dead past. The anti-liberal rumors of the ‘dead’ of liberalism are ‘greatly exaggerated’.