Posts Tagged → liberalism

Jonah Goldberg on Post-Liberal Conservatism

President Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference

Where the post-liberals have a point is that humans are happiest in communities, families and institutions of faith. The solution to the culture wars is to allow more freedom for these “little platoons” of civil society from which people draw a sense of meaning and belonging. If Sacramento wants Drag Queen Story Hour, so be it. If some other community holds a socially conservative version of the same, that’s fine too.

What America needs is less talk of national unity — from the left or the right — and more freedom to let people live the way they want to live, not just as individuals, but as members of local communities. We don’t need to move past liberalism, we need to return to it.

Jonah Goldberg

For Liberality, Against Parsimonious Liberalism

Instead of the virtues of classical republicanism, the romance of nationalism, the ructions of democracy, many modern liberals give us a vision of an Open Society that is informed by the dreams of Communism itself, a withering away of nationality, religions, social distinctions, and even the family that occurs underneath the tutelage of liberal democratic capitalism rather than a Communist party. That is why, so often, the legal suppressions aimed at Christianity are aimed at things like the principled refusal to profit from one’s labor. None of these cases involve the systematic and conspiratorial deprivation of goods, as Jim Crow did. What offends the modern liberal is something else. The mere assertion of a higher good beyond the Open Society, and beyond ourselves, something higher than profit, is itself counted as an injury, as treasonous. — Michael Brendan Dougherty

Jonah Goldberg on The Tyranny of Cliches

It was my distinct pleasure to have Jonah Goldberg join Pejman Yousefzadeh and myself for this week’s edition of Coffee and Markets.  We discussed his new book The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, the liberal pretense to being non-ideological – and just how much ideology is found in the use of cliches – and how we might be able to combat this ideological base stealing.

Not only is Jonah smart and talented – and really more insightful than he is given credit for – but he is a genuinely nice guy who has been a great friend to me.

Listen to the podcast here.

Look for my review of the book soon.

John Tomasi on a libertarian approach to social justice

Today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, covers a subject of particular interest to me.  Pejman Yousefzadeh and myself were joined by John Tomasi to discuss his book Free Market Fairness, which makes the argument for a libertarian approach to social justice.

Despite its seemingly philosophical and analytical nature, this is a subject of some importance in my mind.  The Right simply must find better ways to address concerns about justice and fairness – mere reactionary impulses won’t work.

Listen to the podcast here.