Liberalism Books - Page 9

The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity

Gene Sperling

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

After two consecutive elections in which Democratic candidates failed to turn clear economic advantages into electoral victory, a debate is raging over what the Democrats should donow. The narrow, red state-blue state argument between chest-beating populists and soulless centrists offers the answer to neither the country's economic future nor the political future of the Democrats. In The Pro-Growth Progressive, President Clinton's longest-serving national economic advisor, Gene Sperling, argues that the best economic strategy for our nation -- and the best strategy for progressives whether they be Democrat, Republican, or Independent -- is to pursue policies that are both progressive and pro-growth, that promote progressive values of upward mobility, fair starts, and economic dignity as well as embrace markets and innovation.

Sperling describes how both parties offer the American public impoverished choices: Democrats in the-sky-is-falling party too often pretend that the way to promote progressive values and expand the American middle class is to slow the pace of the global economy, stop all outsourcing, and intervene in the market. Republicans of the don't-worry-be-happy party hold fast to the bankrupt vision that the best thing for economic growth is the smallest government possible, and have made the conservative deficit hawks of the 1990s an endangered species. But The Pro-Growth Progressive is neither an all-out assault on the Bush agenda nor a partisan call for Democrats to move further left. Both conservatives and progressives have to accept hard truths about the limitations of their approaches. Drawing on his years of policy experience, Sperling lays out a third way on the issues that are dominating the news and Bush's second term: social security, ownership, globalization, and deficit reduction. He explains the policy alternatives that respect the power of free markets while giving government a role in ensuring that the markets benefit all working families. Focused and timely, The Pro-Growth Progressive offers a realistic vision of free enterprise and economic growth in which government can improve education, reduce poverty, and restore the country to fiscal sanity.

Liberty in Troubled Times: A Libertarian Guide to Laws, Politics and Society in a Terrorized World

James Walsh

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Rights and Responsibilities 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful.

When the Founding Fathers started the United States of America, they had a strong notion of what liberty meant. It meant freedoms and rights; but it also meant taking responsibility for your beliefs and actions. They expected every American to balance these rights and responsibilities in his heart and in his life. We've drifted such a long way from that....
This book gives you a road map for getting back to those strong notions. Walsh explains the rights that Americans should expect--and the responsibilites they should accept. He makes it really clear.
I've read lots of books about politics and society but I've never read one that puts things so well. In such a balanced way.
To me, libertarians have always seemed like a kind of wacky and extreme group. But this book isn't wacky at all.
I don't know anything about James Walsh. But why isn't he better known in mainstream political circles?

Editorial Review:

Don't blame al-Qaeda. Don't blame Ashcroft. Look to yourself. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the United States has been swinging from one extreme to another. At first, most citizens were so worried about being killed that they called for security at almost any cost. Then, when that cost became clear, some citizens protested that the amount was too high. From a keen Libertarian perspective, Walsh analyzes the effects of 9/11--and some Americans' childish notions of "liberty," demonstrating that Americans' ideas of liberty had been blurring for years. And he argues that these troubled times can force a clarification of what words like "liberty," "society" and "rights" truly mean.

Liberalism (Concepts in Social Thought)

John Gray

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A Short and Useful Introduction to the Historical and Philosophical foundations of Classical Liberalism and its Offshoots 4 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

The book begins with an introduction in which the author lays out four basic characteristics of liberalism:

1) Individualist - it asserts the moral primacy of the person against the claims of any social collectivity

2) Egalitarian - it confers on all men the same moral status and denies the relevance to legal or political order of differences in moral worth among human beings

3) Universalist - it affirms the moral unity of the human species and according to a second importance to specific historic associations and cultural forms

4) Meliorist - it affirms the corrigibility and improvability of all social institutions and political arrangements

The book is then divided into two parts: part one deals with the historical development of liberalism and part two deals with some of the philosophical issues associated with liberalism. The first part covers the pre-modern and early modern precursors of liberalism (which were of less interest to me), the characteristics of the liberalism of the Enlightenment period (mainly the 18th century), the liberalism of the Liberal Era (mainly the 19th century), the fall of liberalism (in the early and mid 20th century) and its revival (in the late 20th century). The liberalism of the Enlightenment period stressed the equal and natural rights of all men. While it believed that government should guarantee these rights (i.e., freedom of press, freedom of speech, private property, etc.), it generally proposed a limited role of government and stressed the importance of a free-market economy (i.e., free trade, low taxation and low public expenditure). The argument was that political freedom was inherently dependent on economic freedom. Enlightenment liberalism also emphasized reason over superstition and religious fanaticism, taking on a particularly anti-clerical character in countries where the Catholic Church had a very strong presence.

In the liberal era (19th century), however, there was a transition from classical liberalism to modern/revisionary liberalism, the latter expanding on the role of government. Jeremy Bentham (most famous for his conception of the panopticon prison) and John Stuart Mill were key figures in this transition. Bentham's philosophy of Utilitarianism promoted the idea that social institutions could improve society and led to attempts at social engineering. Mill advanced the idea that government ought to correct some of the injustices that occur in the free market system.

These changes, combined with the competition of popular democracy (the public voting against liberal policies) and the general disillusionment caused by WWI and WWII, led to the rise of the ideas of J. M. Keynes who sought to correct the injustices of capitalism with government intervention. Nevertheless, in the 1970s classical liberalism returned as the ideas of Friedrich Hayek found a voice in Margaret Thatcher in England and Ronald Reagan in the US. Following Hayek's argument that socialist economic policies led to totalitarian political policies and economic stagnation, Thatcher and Reagan pushed for limited government and free market reform with some clearly visible successes. The fall of the Soviet Union bolstered the belief that government management of the economy was a failure.

In the second part of the work, the author deals with some of the important philosophical concerns of liberalism, one of which is the concept of freedom. Gray asserts that classical liberals have a negative concept of freedom in that they believe freedom is assured by what the government does "not" do. For them, freedom is brought about by government NON-intervention (one is reminded of Reagan's famous slogan "Government is the problem, not the solution."). Revisionary liberals, on the other hand, have a positive view of freedom, that is, they believe in giving all citizens the opportunity for self-realization. This translates into their belief that government should provide certain basic resources to all individuals, which ultimately calls for government involvement rather than non-intervention. According to Gray: "The demarcation between classical liberalism and modern (revisionary) liberalism is that the latter believe that freedom as autonomy presupposes governmental provision of economic resources and governmental correction of the market process, whereas the former insist on free market policies" (59-60).

Gray also discusses the role of private property in liberalism arguing that private property is an essential part of individual freedom. Following the classical liberal tradition, Gray asserts that under a private property system, the individual can make decisions for himself; he is free in the sense that he is not subject to collective decision making when it comes to how to administer his own property. Gray argues that even non-property owners are freer under such a system because there are more choices in employers and products than there would be if the state controlled everything.

Moreover, Gray gives some time to the potential for conflict between liberalism and democracy. In a liberal system, for example, one should not be able to use a democratic vote and/or representative democracy to call for government intervention in the free market or to take away the right to freedom of speech. Anyone who is familiar with political thought of the 19th century knows that many liberals had a terrible fear of democracy since they viewed it as a "tyranny of the masses." They feared that their rights (and their economic privileges) would be taken away by the will of the ignorant and uninformed majority whose emotions and opinions were easily swayed. The US Constitution attempts to resolve this conflict through a system of checks and balances in which the court serves as a check on the democratic branches of government by ensuring that the laws they pass never violate certain basic liberal principles, or rights, guaranteed in the Constitution. Recent demagoguery revolving around "judicial activism" shows that the conflict between democracy and liberalism can easily be revived.

Although an apologist for classical liberalism, the author tries to give an evenhanded account of the criticisms of both classical and revisionary liberalism. Nevertheless, in my opinion, some of his arguments in favor of a free market economy fall flat. For one, as a proponent of a laissez-faire type economy, he fails to address the inherent contradiction of classical liberalism, which is that ALL classical liberals make exceptions to their own rules when they see fit. For example, Gray acknowledges that a pure laissez-faire economy has never existed, and that classical liberals of all stripes endorse some form of government intervention in the economy (i.e., military defense, education, anti-monopoly laws etc.). However, if we accept that the free market always operates better unhindered by government intervention, such exceptions cannot be justified; they simply undermine the whole liberal thesis. Moreover, in his insistence that private property is key to individual freedom, he does not address the fact that sometimes the rights of the private property holder can usurp the basic rights of other individuals. To give one example (obvious and extreme): when Shell Oil began polluting the land and water in Nigeria that the Ogoni people depended on for subsistence, the government hanged several of the activists who protested the company's actions. First, the destruction to the environment that Shell was causing was overriding these people's "right to life"- these people depended on this land for survival. Secondly, in an attempt to protect this corporation's "right" to do what it wanted on its own private property, the government failed to protect communal property as well as the protestors' right to freedom of expression and association. The government clearly turned to brutal, authoritarian measures to protect the rights of the property holders over those of the propertyless. Along these same lines, the idea that individual freedom and the free market go hand in hand has been proven categorically false as many a brutal dictatorial regime have thrived under free market economies (i.e., Guatemala, Chile). Finally, I think Gray could have mentioned (at least once?) that women, and slaves in the US and European colonies, were initially excluded almost entirely from the liberal project.

Yet, overall I found this work to be a useful and comprehensive overview of the subject.

The Rebirth of Urban Democracy

Jeffrey M. Berry, Kent E. Portney, Ken Thomson

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After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State.

Paul Edward Gottfried

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Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this trenchant challenge to social engineering, Paul Gottfried analyzes a patricide: the slaying of nineteenth-century liberalism by the managerial state. Many people, of course, realize that liberalism no longer connotes distributed powers and bourgeois moral standards, the need to protect civil society from an encroaching state, or the virtues of vigorous self-government. Many also know that today's "liberals" have far different goals from those of their predecessors, aiming as they do largely to combat prejudice, to provide social services and welfare benefits, and to defend expressive and "lifestyle" freedoms. Paul Gottfried does more than analyze these historical facts, however. He builds on them to show why it matters that the managerial state has replaced traditional liberalism: the new regimes of social engineers, he maintains, are elitists, and their rule is consensual only in the sense that it is unopposed by any widespread organized opposition.

Throughout the western world, increasingly uprooted populations unthinkingly accept centralized controls in exchange for a variety of entitlements. In their frightening passivity, Gottfried locates the quandary for traditionalist and populist adversaries of the welfare state. How can opponents of administrative elites show the public that those who provide, however ineptly, for their material needs are the enemies of democratic self-rule and of independent decision making in family life? If we do not wake up, Gottfried warns, the political debate may soon be over, despite sporadic and ideologically confused populist rumblings in both Europe and the United States.

The Virtues of Liberalism

James T. Kloppenberg

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Editorial Review:

This spirited analysis--and defense--of American liberalism demonstrates the complex and rich traditions of political, economic, and social discourse that have informed American democratic culture from the seventeenth century to the present. The Virtues of Liberalism provides a convincing response to critics both right and left. Against conservatives outside the academy who oppose liberalism because they equate it with license, James T. Kloppenberg uncovers ample evidence of American republicans' and liberal democrats' commitments to ethical and religious ideals and their awareness of the difficult choices involved in promoting virtue in a culturally diverse nation. Against radical academic critics who reject liberalism because they equate it with Enlightenment reason and individual property holding, Kloppenberg shows the historical roots of American liberals' dual commitments to diversity, manifested in institutions designed to facilitate deliberative democracy, and to government regulations of property and market exchange in accordance with the public good.

In contrast to prevailing tendencies to simplify and distort American liberalism, Kloppenberg shows how the multifaceted virtues of liberalism have inspired theorists and reformers from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison through Jane Addams and John Dewey to Martin Luther King, Jr., and then explains how these virtues persist in the work of some liberal democrats today. Endorsing the efforts of such neo-progressive and communitarian theorists and journalists as Michael Walzer, Jane Mansbridge, Michael Sandel, and E. J. Dionne, Kloppenberg also offers a more acute analysis of the historical development of American liberalism and of the complex reasons why it has been transformed and made more vulnerable in recent decades.

An intelligent, coherent, and persuasive canvas that stretches from the Enlightenment to the American Revolution, from Tocqueville's observations to the New Deal's social programs, and from the right to worship freely to the idea of ethical responsibility, this book is a valuable contribution to historical scholarship and to contemporary political and cultural debates.

The Color of Freedom: Race and Contemporary American Liberalism (S U N Y Series in Afro-American Studies)

David Carroll Cochran

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Great book! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Came across this book as a reference for a thesis I'm writing on this issue and it became my major source. Mr. Cochran masterfully delves into the subject matter and writes in a organized, concise style. Should be considered for text in related political science/sociology courses.

Read this book! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

David Cochran is my professor at Loras College and really knows what he's talking about in this book. It's very informative and he's a good guy, ;)

Editorial Review:

Using liberal political theory to explore the politics of race in the United States, The Color of Freedom offers a fresh, distinctive, and compelling analysis of the country's continuing dilemma of race. Cochran develops an argument about how contemporary liberalism understands race, what is inadequate about this understanding, and how it can develop a better one. Sitting at the intersection of theory and practice, this book offers an impressive example of how the two must inform each other, especially when it comes to opening up new ways of thinking about old and frustrating problems like that of race in American life.

The Morality of Freedom

Joseph Raz

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A monument of modern liberal thought 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

"The Morality of Freedom" is one of the most important half-dozen books of political theory written since Rawls "A Theory of Justice." Raz has an irresistible gift for framing subjects of discussion, for illustrating them with deft but not overelaborate examples, for parsing distinctions with subtlety but not scholasticism (he makes as many distinctions as are useful, but no more). The book is infused with a profound sense of man as a project-driven and social creature, one whose life is enabled by "social forms" that are supported by political structures. Raz's prose is lucid; his theoretical discerning unflaggingly keen. The result is a true monument of modern liberal philosophy.

Editorial Review:

Ranging over central issues of morals and politics, this book discusses the nature of freedom and authority. It examines the roles of value-neutrality, rights, equality, and the prevention of harm in the liberal tradition, and relates them to fundamental moral questions such as the relation of values to social forms, the comparability of values, and the significance of personal commitments.

Civic Liberalism

Thomas A. Spragens Jr.

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Just read the review 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Professor Spragens deals incitefully with the various forms of modern liberalism. His chapters about Libertarianism and Civic Liberalism are particularly cunning and thought provoking. Although the style is at times dry and thick, any reader who sits down with this in mind will be able to get through it. If anything, the style of writing might leave a reader too tired from the reading to have any of the complex thought the book evokes.

Editorial Review:

In Civic Liberalism, prominent political theorist Thomas A. Spragens, Jr. asserts that most versions of democratic ideals--libertarianism, liberal egalitarianism, difference liberalism, and the liberalism of fear--lead our polity significantly astray. Spragens offers another alternative. He argues that we should recover the multiple and complex aspirations found within the tradition of democratic liberalism and integrate them into a more compelling public philosophy for our time--or what he calls civic liberalism.

The Strange Death of American Liberalism

H.W. Brands

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this provocative book, H. W. Brands confronts the vital question of why an ever-increasing number of Americans do not trust the federal government to improve their lives and to heal major social ills. How is it that government has come to be seen as the source of many of our problems, rather than the potential means of their solution? How has the word liberal become a term of abuse in American political discourse? From the Revolution on, argues Brands, Americans have been chronically skeptical of their government. This book succinetly traces this skepticism, demonstrating that it is only during periods of war that Americans have set aside their distrust and looked to their government to defend them. The Cold War, Brands shows, created an extended, and historically anomalous, period of dependence, thereby allowing for the massive expansion of the American welfare state. Since the 1970s, and the devastating blow dealt to Cold War ideology by America's defeat in Vietnam, Americans have returned to their characteristic distrust of government. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Brands contends, the fate of American liberalism was sealed - and we continue to live with the consequences of its demise.