The Liberal Centrist Trap
Identity politics is vital for liberalism precisely because oppression is never neutral, color-blind, or universal.
Paul Crider
Paul Crider is a husband and father living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He daylights as a semiconductor engineer but otherwise likes to spend his time reading and writing. He grew up in Oklahoma be
ecoliberalism
Liberals of the Anthropocene
Liberals have an environmental problem. Many, if not most, liberals understand that climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions and associated environmental problems require a concerted political response. Yet as a political movement fundamentally committed to the value of the individual, liberalism hasn’t always had much to say about
Capabilities
Degrowth: Neither Left Nor Right, But Backward
Degrowth. The word itself is shocking. For anyone accustomed to the assumptions of positive economic growth in public policy and the fear and hardship associated with economic contractions—recessions—degrowth evokes self-destructive policy, if not a return to primitivism. Yet degrowth deserves a hearing. I hope to show that degrowth
classical liberalism
No, Libertarians Cannot "Reclaim" Liberalism
In 2021 the libertarian representative Justin Amash “reclaim[ed] the word ‘liberal’ for classical liberalism” in a tweet. This wasn’t the first reclamation. George Mason University economist Daniel Klein assembled a “statement of no surrender on the word ‘liberal’” with several hundred signatories, drawing a line in the sand
Ayn Rand
Liberalism versus Reaction in Ayn Rand
We are as gods and might as well get good at it. – Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog Ayn Rand was a brilliant, inventive thinker whose contributions go largely unsung outside libertarian circles. Rand developed a secular eudaimonist ethics decades before the 20th century revival of virtue ethics ignited. She pioneered
featured
Pretend You Are God: Alexander Zevin's History of The Economist
Liberalism at Large is an intellectual biography of The Economist with a special emphasis on how the ideology of the 175+ year old liberal newspaper has evolved—and failed to evolve—with the times. Alexander Zevin argues that this history provides a special insight into liberalism itself, as The Economist
Edmund Fawcett and the Practice of Liberalism
As histories of liberalism go, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea is a remarkable achievement, a history of liberalism over the past two centuries not only as theorized by philosophers and economists, but as practiced by politicians and activists. It’s also a real pleasure to read, with vivid prose.
Adam Smith
The Butcher, the Brewer, the Baker…and the Black Radical
The poor labourer who has the soil and the seasons to struggle with, and who, while he affords the materials for supplying the luxury of all the other members of the common wealth, and bears, as it were, upon his shoulders the whole fabric of human society, seems himself to
featured
Dear Sir: On the Liberal Fragility of The Economist
I want to see The Economist do well. With a few gap years, I’ve subscribed to The Economist for well over a decade—ever since I could enjoy the still-expensive student price in grad school. I place a high value on having an old, venerable institution with deep journalistic
Scorched Earth Racism, Positive Sum Antiracism
After a Democratic primary contest suffused with racial justice themes and a summer of Black Lives Matter uprisings, it is once again time for Democrats to convince themselves that they mustn’t talk too much about race, lest they spook the white moderates. The latest splash has been made by
Adam Smith
Adam Smith's Radical Tools
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own
How I Became an Anti-Racist
The murder of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer has once again brought the issue of systemic racism, police violence, and criminal justice reform to the forefront of the American national conversation, in print and in the streets. As part of that conversation, Liberal Currents solicited
At the Socialist-Liberal Nexus
“In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto Liberals everywhere should cheer the opening essay in
2020
A (Left-)Neoliberal Interpretation of Elizabeth Warren
As one of the most progressive candidates in the 2020 field—even to the left of Bernie Sanders on some tellings—it may seem ridiculous on its face to make a “neoliberal” case for Senator Elizabeth Warren. And “left-neoliberal” will strike many readers as an oxymoron. I hope to explain
Capabilities
The Capabilities Approach and the Problem of Perfectionism
Philosophers who study justice theorize how societies can treat their members fairly and increase everyone’s well-being. One of the most famous frameworks for approaching these questions, the capabilities approach, was developed primarily by philosopher Martha Nussbaum and philosopher-economist Amartya Sen. Some philosophers have argued that there is, ultimately, only
abortion
The Misogyny of Anti-Abortion Politics
If [misogyny] feels like anything at all, it will tend to be righteous: like standing up for oneself or for morality, or—often combining the two—for the “little guy.” It often feels to those in its grip like a moral crusade, not a witch hunt. And it may pursue