Perhaps the coming age will feature populist illiberalisms of the left and right, with one side or the other essentially disenfranchised. Mr Traub: If my answer to the second question is right, liberalism as I understand it may be defunct. The Economist: What needs to happen today to restore liberalism? Many on the left would say that the free-market “neoliberalism” of the 1990s eviscerated FDR’s contract and ushered in the illiberal era. So doing, he reset the terms of American liberalism. They were wrong FDR proved that the welfare state could be fully compatible with political liberty. Thus was born The New Deal, a statist monstrosity for free-market liberals who imagined that greater economic collectivism would inevitably lead to totalitarianism. The time had thus come for “a new economic declaration of rights”. In a 1932 campaign speech, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “Equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists.” America was in the grip of an “economic oligarchy”. America, in perhaps its most glorious moment, preserved political liberty while cushioning the blow of economic calamity. Some took power others, thankfully, didn’t. Mr Traub: The Great Depression promoted the rise of extreme parties of the right and left in Europe. The Economist: Has liberalism ever been at risk of being lost before (other than by outside forces such as in the second world war), and if so, how was it restored? They succeed because their audience no longer accepts the legitimacy of reasoned responses. Political leaders like Donald Trump or Hungary’s Viktor Orban offer easy answers to citizens’ economic and cultural fears. What is more, as the excerpt below suggests, liberal rationality is threatened by the pervasive loss of faith in the neutral principles of science, fact, expertise and reason itself. The sheer volume of people seeking access to liberal societies has left natives fearing for their own heretofore-unquestioned centrality. Liberalism cannot flourish in a world defined by zero-sum calculations. Majorities were more prepared to protect the economic and political rights of minorities-think of the American civil rights movement or the European absorption of immigrants-when a rising tide was lifting all boats. Mr Traub: I would say that the optimism, rationalism, pragmatism that underlie all forms of liberal thinking depended on conditions that no longer obtain. The Economist: What happened, that in many places in the West, we are now in danger of losing it? You can fight over what it is, but in the end, you choose from that tradition what seems most salient to you. Liberalism is an intellectual tradition rather than a text. Are unions bad because they impede the liberty of employers? In the left-of-centre American liberal tradition in which I was raised, workers have a right to protection from the free market even as they benefit from the market. And so with the right to behave as you wish.īut what happens when your liberty limits mine? This is where the branches of liberalism separate. As John Stuart Mill wrote, you have a right to speak your mind even if everyone thinks you’re wrong. Liberalism thus lives in tension, usually healthy, with democratic majoritarianism. James Traub: At the root of the liberal tradition lies a faith in the individual, and thus a deep regard for his or her rights-political, economic, personal. It is followed by an excerpt from the book on the reaction to totalitarianism, notably by George Orwell. Yet society has been there before, as Mr Traub explains in the short interview below.
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