22 quotes
In situations of de facto diversity, attempts to impose a single way of life on an entire population is a formula for dictatorship.
Liberalism and its Discontents (2020)
The one on the right concerned the shift from an older understanding of economic liberalism to what is now called "neoliberalism." Neoliberalism is not... a synonym for capitalism.
There is a liberal form of identity politics that says that liberalism does not live up to its promises of the equal treatment of individuals.
The polarization has a number of different roots.
We tend to feel the greatest bonds of solidarity with people that are close to us. There are very few true citizens of the world.
As a result of the deregulation that occurred in the 1980s and 90s we had an escalating series of financial crises.
The systematic study of how order, and thus social capital, can emerge in spontaneous and decentralized fashion is one of the most important intellectual developments of the late twentieth century.
Be afraid of the Chinese. I mean, the Chinese shoot down satellites in space; they hack into Google's computers; the Osama bin Laden people can't make their underwear blow up.
The mainstream media does have a liberal bias, as does a lot of... higher education, academia...
So... it's closely related to the wealth, and... the safety and comfort of a modern economically developed world.
We need a good alternative to Trumpism. There is a majority in favor of that, but... the other party is really not providing that alternative in a very clear way.
I have been a... classical liberal for most of my life...
Putin and Russia are at the center of an international network of illiberal forces that are seeking to overturn liberal values in virtually every part of the world, and therefore... that's all part of a larger global struggle over our fundamental liberal values.
The limits of this strategy were evident as the century drew to a close. The Marxist left had to confront the fact that actual Communist societies in the Soviet Union and China had turned into grotesque and oppressive dictatorships.
Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (2018)
Liberal values like tolerance and individual freedom are prized most intensely when they are denied: People who live in brutal dictatorships want the simple freedom to speak, associate, and worship as they choose. But over time life in a liberal society comes to be taken for granted and its sense of shared community seems thin.
Liberalism and its Discontents (2020)
Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy.
The End of History and the Last Man (1992)
The more progress that has been made toward eradicating social injustices, the more intolerable the remaining injustices seem, and thus the moral imperative to mobilizing to correct them.
Liberalism and its Discontents (2020)
It has been augmented by technology because the internet has succeeded in... destroying every other source of authority that used to filter news and facts and information that... formed the basis of a democratic ability to have political discourse.
I do want to defend liberalism... in theory and I want to talk about the ways that it is being threatened... today and... some of the consequences...
[L]iberalism is... a protection of human autonomy.