What Was Liberalism?: The Past, Present, and Promise of a Noble Idea

by James Traub

Overview

A sweeping history of liberalism, from its earliest origins to its imperiled present and uncertain future
Donald Trump is the first American president to regard liberal values with open contempt. He has company: the leaders of Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, among others, are also avowed illiberals. What happened? Why did liberalism lose the support it once enjoyed? In What Was Liberalism?, James Traub returns to the origins of liberalism, in the aftermath of the American and French revolutions and in the works of such great thinkers as John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin.
Although the first liberals were deeply skeptical of majority rule, the liberal faith adapted, coming to encompass belief in not only individual rights and free markets, but also state action to provide basic goods. By the second half of the twentieth century, liberalism had become the national creed of the most powerful country in the world. But this consensus did not last. Liberalism is now widely regarded as an antiquated doctrine. What Was LIberalism? reviews the evolution of the liberal idea over more than two centuries for lessons on how it can rebuild its majoritarian foundations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541616844
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	09/24/2019
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

James Traub has spent the last forty years as a journalist for American's leading publications, including the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine. He now teaches foreign policy and intellectual history at New York University and at NYU Abu Dhabi, and is a columnist and contributor at Foreign Policy. He is the author of six previous books on foreign and domestic affairs. His most recent work is John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why Liberalism Matters 1

1 Protecting the People from Themselves 13

2 John Stuart Mill and the Defense of Liberty 37

3 The New Republic and the Refounding of American Liberalism 61

4 Isaiah Berlin and the Anti-totalitarians 93

5 America After the War: Liberalism as Civic Religion 117

6 The End of History in Postwar Europe 141

7 The Great Society Goes Up in Flames 155

8 Europe in the Grip of Nationalism 195

9 The Populist Plutocrat 233

10 Why Did One-Half of America Choose Illiberal Democracy? 243

11 A Liberal Nationalism 257

Acknowledgments 277

Notes 279

Index 295

Editorial Reviews

08/26/2019

A once glorious, now besieged creed gets a searching critique in this shrewd political history. Journalist Traub (John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit) explores liberalism’s development through the ideas of leading theoreticians, from James Madison’s model of limited, constitutional, sometimes antimajoritarian government, to John Stuart Mill’s brief for unfettered personal liberty, to the 20th-century Progressives’ program for an expansive state that tames market capitalism with regulation, provisioning of public goods, and social insurance. His survey culminates in liberalism’s postwar triumphs against fascism and then communism in Europe, and in furthering civil rights in the United States, where it became America’s “civic religion.” He then charts liberalism’s decline as flagging welfare and regulatory states were challenged by resurgent free-market dogmas, globalization brought economic upheaval and insecurity to Western workers, and liberal cosmopolitanism clashed with traditional worldviews. The result, he argues, is the Trump-ian populist backlash against bedrock liberal tenets of inclusiveness, individual rights, and reasoned debate. Writing in elegant, aphoristic prose, Traub’s trenchant analysis takes populist discontents seriously, particularly on the topic of immigration—“It is not at all clear that pious Syrians can become progressive Swedes”—while defending liberalism’s core values. The result is a clear-eyed, timely discussion that illuminates both liberalism’s humanity and its hubris. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Traub's is the most muscular of these [liberalism-is-dying] books in tracing liberalism's evolution."—New York Times Book Review

"Writing in elegant, aphoristic prose, Traub's trenchant analysis takes populist discontents seriously.... The result is a clear-eyed, timely discussion that illuminates both liberalism's humanity and its hubris." —Publishers Weekly

"No post-mortem, James Traub's urgent book accounts for what liberalism has been, why it stumbled, and why it must revive. Much as in the 1930s, assaults on liberal politics from the right and the left practically define our low, dishonest time. Traub joins a rising tide of writers, citizens, and political leaders who are reclaiming the rich, soulful, and indispensable liberal tradition."—Sean Wilentz

"What Was Liberalism? provides a concise guide to both the origins and current travails of the most important idea of our time, one that is being threatened by populists and authoritarians today around the world. It is both sympathetic about liberalism's virtues and clear-eyed as to its limitations, showing us a way forward out of the present crisis."—Francis Fukuyama

"In this remarkable tour de force, James Traub traces the roots of the idea of liberalism with such nuance and depth that even those steeped in political philosophy will gain insight—still more those of us who simply care about basic concepts of governance. This is an invaluable guide to the crisis that now afflicts the West."—John Sexton, President Emeritus of New York University

From the Publisher