Liberalism Books - Page 10

The Third Wave

Samuel P. Huntington

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Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy

Stephen Holmes

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Editorial Review:

In this collection of essays on the core values of liberalism, Stephen Holmes—noted for his scathing reviews of books by liberalism's opponents—challenges commonly held assumptions about liberal theory. By placing it into its original historical context, Passions and Constraints presents an interconnected argument meant to fundamentally change the way we conceive of liberalism.

According to Holmes, three elements of classical liberal theory are commonly used to attack contemporary liberalism as antagonistic to genuine democracy and the welfare state: constitutional constraints on majority rule, the identification of individual freedom with an absence of government involvement, and a strong emphasis on the principle of self-interest. Through insightful essays on Hobbes's analysis of the English Civil War in Behemoth, Bodin's writings on the benefits of limited government, and Mill's views on science and politics, Holmes shows that these basic principles provide, to the contrary, a necessary foundation for the development of democratic, regulatory, and redistributionist politics in the modern era.

Holmes argues that the aspirations of liberal democracy—including individual liberty, the equal dignity of citizens, and a tolerance for diversity—are best understood in relation to two central themes of classical liberal theory: the psychological motivations of individuals and the necessary constraint on individual passions provided by institutions. Paradoxically, Holmes argues that such institutional restraints serve to enable, rather than limit, effective democracy.

In explorations of subjects ranging from self-interest to majoritarianism to "gag rules," Holmes shows that limited government can be more powerful than unlimited government—indeed, that liberalism is one of the most effective philosophies of state building ever contrived. By restricting the arbitrary powers of government officials, Holmes states, a liberal constitution can increase the state's capacity to focus on specific problems and mobilize collective resources for common purposes.

Passions and Constraint is an assessment of what that tradition has meant and what it can mean today.

The Future of Liberalism

Alan Wolfe

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Editorial Review:

A compelling, trenchant, and necessary defense of the liberal tradition that draws upon the ideas of its greatest thinkers to explain not only what the tradition actually is but also why it is still as relevant as ever, and how it can help us chart the course for a politics capable of moving modern society forward.

The Future of Liberalism represents the culmination of four decades of thinking and writing about American politics by one of our leading scholars (“one of liberalism’s last and most loyal sons [whose] criticism . . . is one of the glories of American democracy”—Leon Wieseltier). Alan Wolfe explains how the writings of Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and John Dewey, among others, helped shape the philosophy of liberalism: a capacious conception of human nature, a bedrock belief that people are more important than ideology, a respect for both individualism and its limits, a passion for social justice, and faith in reason and intellectual openness. And we see how liberalism might influence and illuminate contemporary debates on immigration, abortion, executive power, and free speech.

But, at the same time, Wolfe makes clear that before liberalism can be applied to today’s problems, it needs to be recovered, understood, and embraced—not just by Americans but by all modern people—as the most broadly beneficial way to live in our complex world. The Future of Liberalism is a powerfully persuasive step in that direction.

Justice is Conflict

Stuart Hampshire

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Editorial Review:

This text argues that there is an essential analogy between necessary conflicts in the minds of individuals and necessary conflicts in states and societies; and that this is the universal basis of procedural justice. The rational method of resolving these conflicts is the same, but conflict resolution in the state requires institutions, which have their own peculiar histories: hence the variety of outcomes. This is a new basis for political liberalism. It starts from Plato's analogy in the "Republic" between conflict in the soul and conflict in the city. Plato's solution required reason to impose agreement and harmony on the warring passion, and this search for harmony and agreement constitutes the main tradition in political philosophy up to and including contemporary liberal theory. The author undermines this tradition by developing a distinction between justices in procedures, which demands that both sides in a conflict should be heard, and justice in matters of substance, which will always be disputed. Rationality in private thinking consists in adversary reasoning, and so it does in public affairs. Moral conflict is eternal and institutionalised argument is its only universally acceptable restraint and the only alternative to tyranny.

The Terror of Neoliberalism: Authoritarianism and the Eclipse of Democracy (Cultural Politics and the Promise of Democracy)

Henry A. Giroux

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Time to save human race running out 4 out of 5 stars.
13 of 14 people found this review helpful.

This book is essential, but be warned, it is almost relentlessly grim.

As it should be, for it paints the United States as a country spinning away from any semblance of an actual, functioning democracy and into a web where capitalism is the new democracy and public participation in the phenomenon that shape our lives is largely removed or rendered a cynical joke. Giroux examines neoliberalism as the main 'philosophy' or force that has driven the USA toward a more private society where the social contract is chipped away, job, life, and health security are weakened to strengthen authority, inequality has gone through the roof, and of course, money rules. That it's now easier to imagine the end of the world before the end of the current strain of capitalism (which has pretty much replaced democracy) just about says it all.

Giroux covers the erosion of public debate, where the complete corruption of terms neutralizes discussion and discourages thinking ('conservative', 'liberal', 'terrorism', etc, etc), the slow death of public space, public service, and the obsessive privatization of life, and other major phenomenon you never hear about in the news because you'd probably want to kill yourself, or do something about it.

He's certainly not off point, if anything, he's rightfully disgusted about the state of affairs. Where is the outrage, he asks. As for the Bush administration, it's not new, it's just more extreme in its vision of an 'ownership society' and in the empty rhetoric of 'rugged individualism' and 'freedom from the government' that is, of course, a weapon against the common schlep who can only increase their human value by positioning themselves as profit-generators. The poor subsidize the rich, absorbing risk while the dough pours into the same few pockets. Everybody else can rent themselves out to whoever decides to keep jobs in the USA, where we endlessly consume while producing less and less. And the government, well, it's this terrible, meddlesome, flabby entity that should be cut down to size because it's restricting all of us. Unless, of course, that same government works overtime to protect the rich from the market forces that would destroy them as it bails out failing companies, enacts tariffs, and gives huge breaks to those who need it least so that we can all survive but hiring ourselves out to the same folks. If you're lucky, maybe you can work at a nice suburban office park that your favorite credit card or cell phone company has decided to establish in your area.

Judging by this sober assessment, the US of A is heading down the tubes, and fast. What does one do? The time to act is now, it seems, though our choices are fewer and fewer. When we're all sitting in front of a computer for 8-10 hours a day doing intellectually bankrupt work for pathological institutions that threaten to toss us out because we don't fit into their Excel columns, cost too much to take care of because of a massively inefficient health care system, and are subject to huge phenomenon that nobody really bothers to address in the pursuit of cash, I guess we can all hope we're near the blast radius when mankind decides to finally blow up the world.

Not the most cheerful book, it's a cold, hard look at what has happened to the state of democracy in the USA, and how the forces of capital have boxed and wrapped every facet of life, destroying anything the founding fathers had in mind. Time to go live in the woods.

Editorial Review:

Neo-liberalism has become the most influential ideology of our times. It guides both Democratic and Republican policies and, increasingly, those of European and developing countries worldwide. In The Terror of Neoliberalism, influential cultural critic Henry Giroux assesses the impact of neoliberalism and points to better approaches to building real democracy.

Neoliberalism, too commonly regarded an economic theory, is a complex of values, ideologies, and practices that work more broadly as a 'cultural field'.; Giroux argues that its cultural dimensions erode the public participation that is the very foundation of democratic life. Under neoliberal policies, Giroux shows, populations are increasingly denied the symbolic, educational, and economic capital necessary for engaged citizenship. Giroux assesses the impact of neoliberalism on the language of democracy, race, education, and the media, offering alternatives necessary to restore our democratic institutions.

Reconstructing America: The Symbol of America in Modern Thought

James W. Ceaser

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

It's about anti-americanism 4 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This book is about the intellectual roots of anti-american sentiment. It traces anti-americanism back to 18th century France where Buffon, a famous biologist, developed a theory about the degeneracy of animals and plants in the New World. Although Franklin and Jefferson reacted against Buffon thesis it was to have a brilliant future. James W. Ceaser shows how it morphed through two centuries of intellectual aberrations from having racial, economic to philosophical foundations. Central in his essay are figures like Heidegger and Baudrillard.

Reconstructing America 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Ceaser eloquently captures the intellectual and political foundations of today's anti-america climate. Ceaser provides a clear, yet thorough genealogical analysis of this movement, and manages to spark occasional laughter while providing clever personal insight into the greatest intellectual debates of the 20th century, including the thought of Kojeve, Strauss, Heidegger, and Baudillard. This book has in it the spirit of Alan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind," Roger Kimball's "Tenured Radicals," and Peter Lawler's "Postmodernism Rightly Understood."

Editorial Review:

For too many people, America has become the primary symbol of all that is grotesque, deadening, and oppressive. It is time, says Ceaser in this provocative book, to take America back, to reaffirm confidence in our principles, and to remind ourselves that the real America-as opposed to the symbolic one-has forged a system of liberal democratic government that has shaped the destiny of the modern world.

Virginity or Death!: And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time

Katha Pollitt

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Editorial Review:

“As this book, which is greater than the sum of its brilliant parts makes clear, Katha Pollitt, who is famously a feminist, is also a humorist, a moralist and a most hilarious, wise, and incisive observer.”
–Victor Navasky, author of A Matter of Opinion

Through presidential administrations Democratic and Republican, Katha Pollitt has observed and exposed the inconsistencies and illogic of those who stand in the way of progress solely to hold on to their power. In defense of human rights and equality, she assails the corrupt and educates the misguided with compassion, Swiftian wit, and complete literary authority.

In this compelling collection, Pollitt skewers one hypocrite after another. She suggests, for example, that creationists be permitted to oppose the teaching of evolution only so long as they agree to forgo the benefits of the theory–such as flu vaccines. She gently wonders if those who denounced the decision to allow Terri Schiavo to die in peace would themselves be satisfied to be video-diagnosed by Senator Bill Frist. And in the title essay about fundamentalists’ antagonism toward sex education and STD prevention, she asks, “What is it with these right-wing Christians? Faced with a choice between sex and death, they choose death every time.”

Pollitt is one of the most eloquent and persuasive voices in American political conversation of this or any other era, and Virginity or Death! Is a marvelous demonstration of her keen insight, mordant humor, and sense of justice.

“Katha Pollitt has long and rightly been hailed for her brilliance, wit, and great insight into politics, social issues, and women’s rights. As with all of her work, I am enormously grateful for Virginity or Death!, and also deeply jealous.”
–Anne Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies

Religion and the Demise of Liberal Rationalism: The Foundational Crisis of the Separation of Church and State

J. Judd Owen

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Editorial Review:

If liberalism is premised on inclusion, pluralism, and religious neutrality, can the separation of church and state be said to have a unitary and rational foundation? If we accept that there are no self-evident principles of morality or politics, then doesn't any belief in a rational society become a sort of faith? And how can liberalism mediate impartially between various faiths—as it aims to do—if liberalism itself is one of the competing faiths?

J. Judd Owen answers these questions with a remarkable critical analysis of four twentieth-century liberal and postliberal thinkers: John Dewey, John Rawls and, most extensively, Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish. His unique readings of these theorists and their approaches to religion lead him to conclusions that are meticulously constructed and surprising, arguing against the perception of liberalism as simple moral or religious neutrality, calling into question the prevailing justifications for separation of church and state, and challenging the way we think about the very basis of constitutional government.

The Illusions of Egalitarianism

John Kekes

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Editorial Review:

In this systematic and scathing attack on the dominant contemporary version of liberalism, John Kekes challenges political assumptions shared by the majority of people in Western societies. Egalitarianism, as it’s widely known, holds that a government ought to treat all citizens with equal consideration. Kekes charges that belief in egalitarianism rests on illusions that prevent people from facing unpleasant truths.

Kekes, a major voice in modern political thought, argues that differences among human beings in the areas of morality, reasonability, legality, and citizenship are too important for governance to ignore. In a rigorous criticism of prominent egalitarian thinkers, including Dworkin, Nagel, Nussbaum, Rawls, Raz, and Singer, Kekes charges that their views present a serious threat to both morality and reason.

For Kekes, certain "inegalitarian truths" are obvious: people should get what they deserve, those who are good and those who are evil should not be treated as if they had the same moral worth, people should not be denied what they have earned in order to benefit those who have not earned it, and individuals should be held responsible for their actions. His provocative book will compel many readers to question their faith in liberalism.

After Liberalism

Immanuel Wallerstein

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Understanding world,people and social life 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Some books help us in understanding some key concepts.Exactly 'After Liberalism' is one of these,and Wallerstein serves a very different view to the reader in solving complex problems of internatinal relations and even daily life.

To All Activists--Read This Book!!! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I read this book for a college course, and I must say that it is a great book. It outlines not only the problems with how political action has worked in the past, but also gives insight into what may need to be done to create a sustainable future. I find myself referencing this book all the time.

Not a light read 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Wallerstein's ideas can certainly be thought-provoking and even entertaining. In this regard, 'After Liberalism' does not disappoint. But the text jumps around from one theme to another, leaving us with a rather hazy argument as to what might be coming 'after.' If you are to undertake an adventure with Wallerstein of this kind I would recommend 'The Essential Wallerstein' over this book.

Editorial Review:

In After Liberalism, the distinguished historian and political scientist Immanuel Wallerstein examines the process of disintegration of our modern world-system and speculates on the changes that may occur during the next few decades. He explores the historical choices before us and suggests paths for reconstructing our world-system on a more rational and socially equitable basis.