Neoconservatives defend the use of American power almost entirely in terms of American interests, while the liberals defend the use of American power in the service of liberal ideals.
Category: Liberalism
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Power? What power?
“The problem with liberals is that they think nobody should have any power. Well, people do have power, and the question is which people and to what ends.”
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Dean and the Democrats.
Is Howard Dean going to ride the insurgent wave into the White House? I doubt it.
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Civil rights movements.
Winning “powerful new rights not in the streets but through the work of bureaucrats, lawyers, and judges.”
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MLK’s strategist.
Bayard Rustin’s homosexuality finds a sympathetic hearing, but his socialism does not.
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Liberal realism.
“The realist is anti-utopian, skeptical, and, while in no sense passive, acts from the conviction that while there are many wrongs that do indeed need to be righted, and many causes worth defending, not everything is possible.”
When it comes to Africa, both ends of the political spectrum prefer to look the other way.
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Relativism or pluralism?
“Values may easily clash within the breast of a single individual; and it does not follow that, if they do, some must be true and others false.”
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It isn’t 1933.
When we think that anyone to our right is quasi-fascist — and we say so! — we’re setting ourselves up to fail dramatically.
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More than words.
Neither Christian faith nor liberal principles requires us to embrace weakness, passivity, or even dependency on persuasion without an ultimate appeal to legitimate kinds of coercion.