Kuypers charts the potential effects the printed presses and broadcast media have upon the messages of political and social leaders when they discuss controversial issues. Examining over 800 press reports on race and homosexuality from 116 different newspapers, Kuypers meticulously documents a liberal political bias in mainstream news. This book asserts that such a bias hurts the democratic process by ignoring non-mainstream left positions and vilifying many moderate and most right-leaning positions, leaving only a narrow brand of liberal thought supported by the mainstream press.

This book argues that the mainstream press in America is an anti-democratic institution. By comparatively analyzing press reports, as well as the events that occasioned the coverage, Kuypers paints a detailed picture of the politics of the American press. He advances four distinct reportorial practices that inject bias into reporting, offering perspectives of particular interest to scholars, students, and others involved with mass communication, journalism, and politics in the United States.

Tracing the transformation of liberal political ideology from the end of the Civil War to the early twentieth century, Nancy Cohen offers a new interpretation of the origins and character of modern liberalism. She argues that the values and programs associated with modern liberalism were formulated not during the Progressive Era, as most accounts maintain, but earlier, in the very different social context of the Gilded Age. Integrating intellectual, social, cultural, and economic history, Cohen argues that the reconstruction of liberalism hinged on the reaction of postbellum liberals to social and labor unrest. As new social movements of workers and farmers arose and phrased their protests in the rhetoric of democratic producerism, liberals retreated from earlier commitments to an expansive vision of democracy. Redefining liberal ideas about citizenship and the state, says Cohen, they played a critical role in legitimating emergent corporate capitalism and politically insulating it from democratic challenge. As the social cost of economic globalization comes under international critical scrutiny, this book revisits the bitter struggles over the relationship between capitalism and democracy in post-Civil War America. The resolution of this problem offered by the new liberalism deeply influenced the progressives and has left an enduring legacy for twentieth-century American politics, Cohen argues.

As ethnic, racial, religious, and gender-based groups demand rights to pursue radically diverse lifestyles or maintain their cultural traditions, conflict seems inevitable, even in a free society. Government may offer remedies to social dilemmas -- such as affirmative action, curbs on immigration, or protection of gay rights -- but these may only fan the flames of resentment. Yet any society that tolerates and protects diversity is more likely to preserve the freedom to live one's life without interference.

Emily Gill reexamines the liberal tradition to reconcile its core commitments to autonomy and diversity -- values that in theory are complementary but in practice are often at odds -- and to show that the interaction of these values determines how we as individuals become free. In Becoming Free, she argues that true freedom is enhanced through the promotion of diversity and the encouragement of rational reflection on the options it allows -- and that limited choice or ignorance diminishes such freedom. Yet an incomplete freedom is what many individuals, groups, and states advocate when they commit to particular cultural traditions or religious beliefs, despite the autonomy they themselves enjoy.

Gill traces the implications of these conflicting views by drawing on recent scholarship and legal decisions in six areas: national citizenship, cultural membership, ethnicity and gender, religious belief, sexuality, and civic education. By exploring the tensions between autonomy and diversity in such instances as Boy Scouts membership restrictions, gay rights legislation, and education among the Amish, she not only offers an insightful commentary on current issues but also explores themoral foundations of liberal thought.

Unlike those who criticize liberalism for its shallow philosophical grounding, Gill shows it to have a substantive moral content grounded in the individual's capacity to make rational decisions based on critical reflection. In her tightly woven arguments, she explores real-world problems in a meaningful way for students and for anyone concerned with the future of liberalism, showing that becoming free is an ongoing process of human and social development.

This book is the first English-language edition of a collection of writings by one of Italy's most important radical liberals, Piero Gobetti (1901-1926). In thirty-five thought-provoking essays, Gobetti proposes an original and challenging notion of liberalism as a revolutionary theory of both the individual and social and political movements, His theory is of particular relevance in the wake of the collapse of Marxist socialism, as non-Western countries with nonliberal or antiliberal cultural and moral traditions confront the problems of transition toward democracy and liberalism. Gobetti's ideas continue to influence in important ways today's heated debates over the nature of liberalism.

Gobetti was the first Italian scholar to identify "two Italys": one enlightened and modern though small and weak, the other premodern, traditional, and dominant. A witness to the seizure of power by the Fascists, Gobetti became convinced that Italy's hostility to liberalism could be overcome only with a cultural revolution. Endorsing a radical liberalism, he nevertheless believed that the Communists, led by Antonio Gramsci, could play, a crucial role in democratizing Italy by helping to develop a secular culture. For a liberal state to subsist and grow, Gobetti argued, there must first be a transformation of both the economic structure and the legal and moral culture of the society.

For too many people, America has become the primary symbol of all that is grotesque, deadening, and oppressive-or, as Heidegger once put it, the "emerging monstrousness of modern times." This image of a degenerate America, constructed by European intellectuals, has been gradually accepted within the United States, for America is now under siege by its own philosophers, literary critics, and postmodern thinkers. It is time, says James Ceaser in this provocative book, to take America back, to reaffirm confidence in our principles, and to remind ourselves that the real Americas opposed to the symbolic one has forged a system of liberal democratic government that has shaped the destiny of the modern world. With wit and passion, Ceaser traces the origins of the negative images of America, beginning with French scientists in the middle of the eighteenth century who viewed the country as a land of racial and physical degeneracy, and continuing with German thinkers from Hegel to Nietzsche, Spengler, and Heidegger, who viewed America as culturally inferior and a technological wasteland. Ceaser puts these critics of America in a dialogue with the country's defenders-among them Alexander Hamilton, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Leo Strauss. By revealing the sources of the hostility to America, Ceaser undermines the position of its present attackers. He contends that only if we reassert political science rather than cultural and literary criticism as the proper intellectual discipline to direct politics will we free the real America from the symbolic America and vindicate its name.

The longest serving Dutch Prime Minister (1982-94), Professor Lubbers is known for his support of liberal values, social equity, human rights, democratic governments, and spirituality. In this book he explores ways to conciliate these values with global economization.Dr. Lubbers argues that the global economy created by new information technologies has led to a competitive world atmosphere that works against social equity, local movements, and national interests. In this context he urges that steps be taken to ensure that the new era evolves in the interests of justice, peace, and fairness. Such steps may include combining the governance of nation states; providing development assistance; supporting initiatives in legislation and jurisprudence, such as an international criminal court, and initiating a global dialogue on values. For Dr. Lubbers, liberal values mean a "just, sustainable, and participatory society."This volume presents the third in a series of lectures that offer reflections by well-known figures on topical, liberal-oriented themes. This particular lecture has the distinction of never having been delivered, since Toronto was in the midst of a crippling snowstorm on the afternoon of 14 January 1999, when Lubbers was scheduled to speak at Victoria University. The two earlier volumes in the series present lectures by John Kenneth Galbraith and Michael Ignatieff.

We are facing the end of politics altogether, Russell Jacoby argues in "The End of Utopia." Political contestation is premised on people's capacity for offering competing visions of the future, but in a world that has run out of political ideas and no longer harbors any utopian visions, real political opposition is no longer possible. In particular, Jacoby traces the demise of liberal and leftist politics. Leftist intellectuals and critics no longer envision a different society, only a modified one. The left once dismissed the market as exploitative, but now honors it as rational and humane. The left used to disdain mass culture, but now celebrates it as rebellious. The left once rejected pluralism as superficial, but now resurrects pluralist ideas in the guise of multiculturalism.Ranging across a wide terrain of cultural and political phenomena--the end of the Cold War, the rise of multiculturalism, the acceptance of mass culture, the eclipse of independent intellectuals--Jacoby documents and laments a widespread retreat from the utopian spirit that has always been the engine for social and political change.

Drawing on theories of power and the creation of subjects, Cruikshank argues that individuals in a democracy are made into serf-governing citizens through the small. scale and everyday practices of voluntary associations, reform movements, and social service programs. She argues that our empowerment is a measure of our subjection rather than of our autonomy from power. Through a close examination of several contemporary American 'technologies of citizenship" -- from welfare rights struggles to philanthropic self-help schemes to the organized promotion of self-esteem awareness -- she demonstrates how social mobilization reshapes the political in ways largely unrecognized in democratic theory. Although the impact of a given reform movement may be minor, the techniques it develops for creating citizens far extend the reach of governmental authority.

Combining a detailed knowledge of social policy and practice with insights from poststructural and feminist theory, The Will to Empower shows how democratic citizens and the political are continually recreated.

Haag examines the nineteenth-century obsession with the perils of seduction and twentieth-century disputes over white slavery, arranged marriages, interfacial relationships, and rape. The history of heterosexual modernity and identity must, she argues, be viewed as a crucial component of a much larger historical narrative -- that of the ways in which individual freedom and citizenship have been continually redefined in American liberal culture. She illuminates the development of liberalism from its "classic" stage that ended after the post-Reconstruction era to a "modern" version that came to fruition with the judicial acceptance of the right to privacy. Finally, she shows how debates over the meaning of heterosexual consent and violence contributed to this transformation.

In April 1969, one of America's premier universities was celebrating parents' weekend and the student union was an armed camp, occupied by over eighty defiant members of the campus's Afro-American Society. Marching out Sunday night, the protesters brandished rifles, their maxim: "If we die, you are going to die." Cornell '69 is an electrifying account of that weekend which probes the origins of the drama and describes how it was played out not only at Cornell but on campuses across the nation during the heyday of American liberalism.Donald Alexander Downs tells the story of how Cornell University became the battleground for the clashing forces of racial justice, intellectual freedom, and the rule of law. Eyewitness accounts and retrospective interviews depict the explosive events of the day and bring the key participants into sharp focus: the Afro-American Society, outraged at a cross-burning incident on campus and demanding amnesty for its members implicated in other protests; University President James A. Perkins, long committed to addressing the legacies of racism, seeing his policies backfire and his career collapse; the faculty, indignant at the university's surrender, rejecting the administration's concessions, then reversing itself as the crisis wore on. The weekend's traumatic turn of events is shown by Downs to be a harbinger of the debates raging today over the meaning of the university in American society. He explores the fundamental questions it posed, questions Americans on and off campus are still struggling to answer: What is the relationship between racial justice and intellectual freedom? What are the limits in teaching identity politics? And what is the proper meaning of the university in a democratic polity?"

Although labor unions have faced a decline in membership in recent decades, they have not necessarily lost their political clout. This timely book illuminates the inner dynamics of labor's relationship to the American political system over the past generation. It examines organized labor from the Johnson administration to the end of Clinton's first term, showing that labor's alliance with the Democratic Party has endured despite changes in the economy and the revival of conservatism.

Drawing on extensive interviews with union leaders and lobbyists, Taylor E. Dark provides a historical perspective often lacking in studies of union political involvement. He compares the relationship of presidents Johnson, Carter, and Clinton with labor and analyzes cases of union involvement in legislative lobbying, executive decision-making, and both congressional and presidential elections.

The book explores such topics as the effects of political reform on union power, the development of union legislative goals, and the impact of unions on economic policymaking, and also evaluates the controversy over union campaign spending in the 1996 elections. It demonstrates that labor's evolving alliance with the Democrats continues to shape America.

Legal scholarship is in a state of crisis, Laura Kalman argues in this history of the most prestigious field in law studies: constitutional theory. Since the time of the New Deal, says Kalman, most law scholars have identified themselves as liberals who believe in the power of the Supreme Court to effect progressive social change. In recent years, however, new political and interdisciplinary perspectives have undermined the tenets of legal liberalism, and liberal law professors have enlisted other disciplines in the attempt to legitimize their beliefs. Such prominent legal thinkers as Cass Sunstein, Bruce Ackerman, and Frank Michelman have incorporated the work of historians into their legal theories and arguments, turning to eighteenth-century republicanism-which stressed communal values and an active citizenry-to justify their goals. Kalman, a historian and a lawyer, suggests that reliance on history in legal thinking makes sense at a time when the Supreme Court repeatedly declares that it will protect only those liberties rooted in history and tradition. There are pitfalls in interdisciplinary argumentation, she cautions, for historians' reactions to this use of their work have been unenthusiastic and even hostile. Yet lawyers, law professors, and historians have cooperated in some recent Supreme Court cases, and Kalman concludes with a practical examination of the ways they can work together more effectively as social activists.

Why do people who identify themselves as liberal or egalitarian sometimes embrace intolerance or even preach violence? Illiberalism has come to be expected of the right in this country; its occurrence on the left is more paradoxical but no less real. Although equality lies at the heart of the liberal tradition, the earnest pursuit of egalitarian goals has often come at the expense of other liberal ideals.

In this provocative book, Richard J. Ellis examines the illiberal tendencies that have characterized egalitarian movements throughout American history, from the radical abolitionists of the 1830s to the New Left activists of the 1960s. He also takes on contemporary radical feminists like Catherine MacKinnon and radical environmental groups like Earth First to show that, even today, many of the American left's sacred cows have cloven hooves.

Ellis identifies the organizational and ideological dilemmas that caused Students for a Democratic Society to transform itself from a democratic to an elitist organization, or that allow radicals to justify illegal acts as long as they are free of self-interest. He explains how orthodoxy arises within a group from the need to maintain distance from a society it views as hopelessly corrupt, and how individuals committed to egalitarian causes are particularly susceptible to illiberalism--even poets like Walt Whitman, who celebrated the common people but often expressed contempt for their mundane lives. Political correctness, idealizing the oppressed, and an affinity for authoritarian and charismatic leaders are all parts of what Ellis calls "the dark side of the left."

Building on the groundwork laid by Richard Hofstadter in his pioneering book, "The Age of Reform," Ellis exposes the shortcomings of today's left and provides a badly needed historical perspective on the contemporary debate over "political correctness." The Dark Side of the Left is a gutsy book that is essential reading for anyone who occasionally feels dark forebodings about seemingly noble causes.

The history of modern liberalism has been hotly debated in contemporary politics and the academy. Here, Judith Stein uses the steel industry--long considered fundamental to the U.S. economy--to examine liberal policies and priorities after World War II. In a provocative revision of postwar American history, she argues that it was the primacy of foreign commitments and the outdated economic policies of the state, more than the nation's racial conflicts, that transformed American liberalism from the powerful progressivism of the New Deal to the feeble policies of the 1990s. Stein skillfully integrates a number of narratives usually treated in isolation--labor, civil rights, politics, business, and foreign policy--while underscoring the state's focus on the steel industry and its workers. By showing how those who intervened in the industry treated such economic issues as free trade and the globalization of steel production in isolation from the social issues of the day--most notably civil rights and the implementation of affirmative action--Stein advances a larger argument about postwar liberalism. Liberal attempts to address social inequalities without reference to the fundamental and changing workings of the economy, she says, have led to the foundering of the New Deal state. |Using the steel industry to examine liberal policies and priorities after World War II, Stein shows that economic policy--not racial conflict--led to the feeble liberalism of the 1990s.

This important book addresses head-on the controversy over attempts to reshape society in the name of antidiscrimination. While most Americans understand that racism and similar ideologies are so destructive that the state should do what it can to eradicate them, this understanding conflicts with another widely held idea, that the shaping of citizens' beliefs is not a legitimate objective of a liberal state. Andrew Koppelman argues that the modern conception of antidiscrimination law as a project of cultural transformation is consistent with, and even demanded by, principles of liberty. He clarifies the moral principles that should guide a society in which some groups, such as blacks, women, and homosexuals, are unfairly stigmatized. Koppelman surveys leading accounts of the evil that antidiscrimination law seeks to remedy, analyzing works by such theorists as Ronald Dworkin, John Hart Ely, Kenneth Karst, Owen Fiss, Alan Freeman, Catharine MacKinnon, and Iris Marion Young. He shows that, while each points to a valuable moral aspiration, none of these aspirations can be realized without cultural transformation, because the central evil that antidiscrimination law seeks to remedy is unjust social devaluation. Koppelman takes up objections from liberal theory, focusing on the works of Robert Nozick, John Rawls, and Bruce Ackerman, and he concludes that liberal principles themselves condemn the corrupting and degrading effects of prejudice and forbid official indifference to those effects. In a final chapter, he addresses the question whether the law should contribute to the transformation of culture by penalizing hate speech and pornography.

"Extraordinarily creative . . . an important and engrossing contribution to a complex and elusive subject."—Newsweek

Around the turn of the century, the American liberal tradition made a major shift away from politics. The new radicals were more interested in the reform of education, culture, and sexual mores. Through vivid biographies, Christopher Lasch chronicles these social reformers from Jane Addams, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Lincoln Steffens to Norman Mailer and Dwight MacDonald.

Winner, 1996 Elaine and David Spitz Book Prize for the best book onliberal and democratic theory, Conference for the Study of PoliticalThought. Winner, 1994 First Book Prize, Foundations of PoliticalThought Organized Section, American Political Science Association.Between the Norm and the Exception contributes historical insight to the ongoing debate over the future of the rule of law in welfare-state capitalist democracies. The core issue is whether or not society can offer its citizens welfare-state guarantees and still preserve the liberal vision of a norm-based legal system. Franz Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer, in an age dominated by Hitler and Stalin, sought to establish a sound theoretical basis for the "rule of law" ideal. As an outcome of their sophisticated understanding of the liberal political tradition, their writings suggest a theoretical missed opportunity, an alternative critical theory that might usefully be applied in understanding (and perhaps countering) the contemporary trend toward the deformalization of law.

The liberal faith is that people are naturally good and if they are not subject to unjust social arrangements, then they will live good rather than evil lives. This is an indefensible, sentimental, and destructive falsification of reality. It makes wishful thinking into a political program. It ignores the historical record that testifies to the contrary. It arrogates to itself the moral high ground by pretending to champion the welfare of the poor, the needy and the unfortunate, while pursuing policies that refuse to face the causes of their misery and make it impossible to improve their lot....

Liberals believe that if people do not have to contend with poverty, discrimination, crime, and other social ills, if they are not ignorant, indoctrinated, or enraged by injustice, if they have the time and opportunity to think about their lives and actions, then they will not do what is evil. This is the liberal faith, and it is indefensible. -- from Against Liberalism

Liberalism is doomed to failure, John Kekes argues in this penetrating criticism of its basic assumptions. Liberals favor individual autonomy, a wide plurality of choices, and equal rights and resources, seeing them as essential for good lives. They oppose such evils as selfishness, intolerance, cruelty, and greed. Yet the more autonomy, equality, and pluralism there is, Kekes contends, the greater is the scope for evil. According to Kekes, liberalism is inconsistent because the conditions liberals regard as essential for good lives actually foster the very evils liberals want to avoid, and avoiding those evils depends on conditions contrary to the ones liberals favor.

Kekes argues further that the liberal conceptions ofequality, justice, and pluralism require treating good and evil people with equal respect, distributing resources without regard to what recipients deserve, and restricting choices to those that conform to liberal preconceptions. All these policies are detrimental to good lives. Kekes concludes that liberalism cannot cope with the prevalence of evil, that it is vitiated by inconsistent commitments, and that -- contrary to its aim -- liberalism is an obstacle to good lives.

What kind of impact do centre parties have in parliamentary democracies? How does the existence and growth of centre parties affect party system polarization, electoral competition and government stability? This text reassesses the perception of centre parties as a force of moderation. The author argues that this intuitive judgement, which has become accepted by political scientists is dubious, if not incorrect. He examines contemporary centre parties in Europe and asserts that the opposing tendency of centre parties contributes to party system polarization.

Daniel Born explores the concept of liberal guilt as it first developed in British political and literary culture between the late Romantic period and World War I. Disturbed by the twin spectacle of urban poverty at home and imperialism abroad, major novelists--including Charles Dickens, George Eliot, George Gissing, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, and H. G. Wells--offered a host of characters who reflect distinct moral responses and sensibilities.

Motivated by the belief that evil is a product of social and economic disparities rather than individual depravity, these characters exhibit guilty consciences in which the guilt is not at all like that envisioned by Victorian Christianity. But at the same time, they are premodern, in that they do not possess our therapeutic culture's notion of guilt as neurosis or pathology.

Liberal guilt declined in the Edwardian period, as exemplified in Wells's postmodern masterpiece, "Tono-Bungay," But Born contends that it is a key aspect of 'the liberal imagination' expounded by Lionel Trilling and that it offers correctives to the simplistic individual moral economy of Christianity, the authoritarian modernisms that followed the Edwardian era, and even the strains of liberal nationalism that define the present day.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809), the man who gave the name to the United States, became known as the Voice of the Revolution. Paine was one of the most radical and outspoken figures of the eighteenth century - an independent thinker on a level with Voltaire and Goethe. The self-educated former tax collector was famed for his fiery disposition and brilliant way with words in defense of liberty. A cabin boy on board a privateer, twice married, first an official and later a victim of the French revolutionary government, at odds with his fellow American rebels, and constantly beset by money problems, Paine lived a full and exciting life. In addition to his better known accomplishments, he designed bridges, a "smokeless candle" and a detailed plan for the invasion of Britain - and all this from a man who abruptly turned from being a craftsman to a statesman at the age of thirty-seven. Together with his colleagues Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Paine provided the philosophical underpinnings for the new nation. He is best known for his radical works The Age of Reason, Rights of Man, and, above all, Common Sense.

Liberalism is a critically important topic in the contemporary world as liberal values and institutions are in retreat in countries where they seemed relatively secure. Lucidly written and accessible, this book offers an important yet neglected Russian aspect to the history of political liberalism. Vanessa Rampton examines Russian engagement with liberal ideas during Russia's long nineteenth century, focusing on the high point of Russian liberalism from 1900 to 1914. It was then that a self-consciously liberal movement took shape, followed by the founding of the country's first liberal (Constitutional-Democratic or Kadet) party in 1905. For a brief, revelatory period, some Russians - an eclectic group of academics, politicians and public figures - drew on liberal ideas of Western origin to articulate a distinctively Russian liberal philosophy, shape their country's political landscape, and were themselves partly responsible for the tragic experience of 1905.

This book presents the first modern overview of Liberal government during the period when the Liberals dominated British politics. Parry argues that Liberalism was a much more coherent force than has been generally recognised, and goes on to reinterpret the pattern of nineteenth-century political development. The Liberal tradition attached great importance to 'parliamentary government' as the means of reconciling the nation to the exercise of government power, and Parry concentrates on parliamentary politics, seeing it as the best way to understand the Liberals' coherence and success. After a review of the origins of Liberalism before 1830, the book examines in turn the strategies of successive Liberal leaders from Grey to Gladstone and Hartington. Nineteenth-century Liberalism was concerned to maintain the rule of a propertied but socially diverse, rational and civilised elite, in the belief that this was the best means to administer the state economically and equitably, and to promote an industrious and virtuous citizenship. Because of the widespread popularity of the economic, foreign and religious policies followed to this end, and because of the flexible, sometimes cynical, presentational skills of Liberal leaders, the Liberals became the most popular party for much of the century. After 1867 however, argues Parry, Gladstone's crusading politics outweighed the gains achieved by the organisational mobilisation of grass-roots groups and led directly to the break up of the party in 1886. This book therefore not only presents a clear and original introduction to nineteenth-century Liberal politics, but also explores the theory, practice and consequences of Liberal approaches to theconstitution and to religious, moral and social policy.