It's no secret that liberalism didn't always live up to its own ideals. In America, many people were denied equality before the law. Who counted as full human beings worthy of universal rights was contested for centuries, and only recently has this circle expanded to include women, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people, and others. Conservatives complain that liberalism empties the common life of meaning.
As the renowned political philosopher Francis Fukuyama shows in Liberalism and Its Discontents, the principles of liberalism have also, in recent decades, been pushed to new extremes by both the right and the left: neoliberals made a cult of economic freedom, and progressives focused on identity over human universality as central to their political vision. The result, Fukuyama argues, has been a fracturing of our civil society and an increasing peril to our democracy.
Fukuyama isthe Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a faculty member at Stanford's Institute on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His previous books include Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment and The End of History and the Last Man.
Liberalism and its Discontents
Is common ground hiding in plain sight?
When four threats to democracy collide
Wynton Marsalis on democracy as jazz and The Ever Fonky Lowdown
News deserts are democracy deserts, too
The Supreme Court's politics and power
The perfect storm for election disaster
The 2020 election from WPSU's Take Note
Hong Kong's fight is everyone's fight
Sheriffs 101
Students learn, students vote
A dark side to "laboratories of democracy"
A fall preview — with a new cohost!
YIMBYs and NIMBYs in a democracy
After 100 years, there's still no "woman voter"
She Votes! — Susan B. Anthony and "voting while female"
Reason in politics and hope for democracy
The people who choose the President
Broken Ground: Robert Bullard on environmental justice
The world's most punitive democracy [revisited]
Suspect citizens in a democracy [revisited]
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
City Manager Unfiltered
Potencial Americano
The ASIC Podcast
The Chris Plante Show
Strict Scrutiny