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Liberalism, liberals

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

Liberalism By the 1980s, you could be a liberal in good standing without holding a particularly liberal position on economics. Joshua Green, in Rebels © 2024 Kwiple.com
Liberalism The eternal mistake is to conflate liberalism, a set of specific beliefs, involving trade-offs and hard choices, with what we might call liberality: an openness of spirit, a generalised niceness. You can only build a society on the first of these things. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, October 5, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Liberalism [T]he future of power-sharing liberalism depends on a project of democracy renovation that would reverse the dynamics of capture of our political system by small elites (wealth elites, radicalized MAGA acolytes, and hyperpolarized party bases). Democracy renovation requires a set of critical reforms to rebalance and spread the allocation of power in our political system. Danielle Allen, The New Republic, July/August 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Liberalism In theory, one might argue that liberal, open societies should have open borders. In practice, tbat would rapidly spell the end of liberalism in most such societies, especially those with a high standard of living. Timothy Garton Ash, Homelands: A Personal History of Europe © 2023 Kwiple.com
Liberalism In which half of the West is liberalism more vulnerable: the US or Europe? Well, the raw individual clout of Trump unites and fuels America’s hard right. What serves the equivalent role in Europe  is a sense of demographic and cultural siege. The difference is that Trump will one day be gone. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, November 28, 2023 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Liberalism The lesson of this decade so far is that liberalism isn’t tenable without hard power. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 25, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Liberalism The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population. Vladimir Putin © 2019 Kwiple.com
Liberalism [A] major handicap for liberalism today is that for centuries it came to most of the world in the form of imperialism. Recall that John Stuart Mill's day job was in the East India Company and he thought that colonised peoples in their “nonage” were not ready for his refined liberties. Western universalism was, in practice, anything but universal. Some of the worst horrors that human beings have inflicted on other human beings – violent conquest, torture, genocide, slavery –  were justified by reference to the highest ideals of liberty, civilisation and enlightenment. … The road to hell can be paved with liberal intentions. Timothy Garten Ash, Prospect magazine, January/February 2021 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Liberalism The messy truth is that in the real world, the only hope for preserving liberalism at home and abroad is the maintenance of a world order conducive to liberalism. … The purpose of NATO and other alliances is to defend not against direct threats to U.S. interests but against a breakdown of the order that best serves those interests. Robert Kagan, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Liberalism The poorer strata everywhere are more liberal or leftist on economic issues; they favor more welfare state measures, higher wages, graduated income taxes, support of trade unions, and so forth. But when liberalism is defined in non-economic terms — as support of civil liberties, internationalism, etc. — the correlation is reversed. The more well-to-do are more liberal, the poorer are more intolerant. Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man © 2021 Kwiple.com
Liberalism There was also a near supermajority decision in Florida to restore voting rights to people with some past felony convictions. Similarly, robust majority coalitions resting on cross-  ideological alliances have protected reproductive freedom in states like Kansas and Ohio. Each of these decisions is about affirming not material well-being but core freedoms (personal and political) and inclusion in the political community.  This is liberalism. Twenty-first century liberalism. Power-sharing liberalism. … The commentariat perhaps fails to see this grassroots rebirth of liberalism because the rebirth is so much about political, personal, and civil rights and not economic rights. Danielle Allen, The New Republic, July/August 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Liberalism The woke left is a threat to liberalism. So is the post-truth right. But each is now well understood. The extent to which liberals themselves are a problem isn't. Because their creed puts such stress on reason, it attracts those who are hopeless at conflict: at the recognition of its frequent necessity, and at the actual waging of it. … Sometimes, at least, set a brute to catch a brute. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, August 16, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Liberals Get the hell out of the United States of America. Allen West, Tea Party Republican, to liberals  © 2015 Kwiple.com
Liberals A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel. Robert Frost © 2020 Kwiple.com
Liberals say They that wasted us required of us mirth Psalms 137:3 © 2015 Kwiple.com
 
Liberals say Thou makest us a strife unto our neighbours: and our enemies laugh among themselves. Psalms 80:6 © 2015 Kwiple.com