Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism by Paul Starr

Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism Reviews

• 
  Steve

  Although we Americans generally call ourselves conservative or progressive these days, Paul Starr argues that we are all actually liberal: heirs to the forces of freedom and equality that began during the British, American and French revolutions. Competing political philosophies like socialism and fascism barely exist anymore.
  
  Instead modern day conservatives advocate a ideological commitment to traditional or "constitutional liberalism" as found in our founding documents. This emphasizes limitations on what the state can do with a particular emphasis on economic liberty. Progressives other the other hand advocate a more adaptable form of liberalism, less ideological. Yes, the founding documents got it right, they say, but the values they stated weren't fully realized. Adaptable liberals fought to expand political rights to those who were excluded originally: those without property, blacks, women and so on. Adaptable liberals also noticed the power disparity created when the industrial revolution resulted in large concentrations of wealth; they advocated countervailing forces like unions and a government that would defend the public good. Adaptable liberals tend to give more emphasis to civil liberties rather than economic.
  
  Listening to modern day conservatives we get the impression that freedom is the polar opposite of state power and that to limit the state is to enhance freedom. Starr argues that liberalism (traditional and adaptable) isn't merely "anti-state". If it were, how did the nations that invented it, Britain and America, come to be world powers? A weak state is not the goal. Political freedom requires a powerful state, but one that constrained.
  
  This is a thought provoking book. Well worth a read.
• 
  Pedram

  Liberalism in America has been under siege. Conservatives treat it as an epithet and some progressives spurn it as well. But in his new book Freedom’s Power, Paul Starr reminds us of its roots in American tradition and its power to make us freer and more secure. He describes how liberal society and liberal politics create power—how they generate the capacity to realize the aims of liberty, justice and security. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" still define its aspirations as well today as they did in Jefferson’s time. But liberalism offers more: the effective principles for creating and controlling power that have made America both prosperous and powerful.
  
  At a time when conservative policies are weakening America’s long-term fiscal, economic, and international strength as well as its liberties, the liberal project is more urgent than ever, says Starr. Freedom's Power shows why liberalism works — and how it can work for America again.
• 
  Carlos

  Starr takes the reader through the history of liberalism, with a particular focus on the Anglo-American tradition. He starts in the 17th century and charts the influence of British thinkers in outlining the aims of this new creed, following its influence in the American and French Revolution. Starr then takes the rest of the book to highlight the way these aims were either changed, reaffirmed or rediscovered in order to give us everything from “classical liberalism” to “left liberalism” and “neoliberalism”. Similarly, Starr shows the way liberal thought has been applied to economics, civil rights and international relationships to various levels of success. Starr ends the book with a tour of the current American and European models of liberal democracy and points out the ways they might expand the liberal tradition as they seek it to apply it to the challenges of a new age.
• 
  Amir

  خلاصه‌ای هیجان انگیز از تجربه‌ی لیبرالیسم کلاسیک و لیبرالیسم دموکراتیک و نو که توسط دوستان فراهم و با دوستان خوانده شد، بی‌نهایت تسلی‌بخش بود، نه کتاب و مفاهیمش، که انسان‌بودگی و حس مبهمی از با هم بودن و هم‌سرنوشت بودن که از طریق ارتباط به اجبار مجازی در این ایام کرونایی محقق شد، ایامی که به قول ناصر فکوهی:"غلبه و تاثیر «احساس مرگ» بر «مرگ» شاید مهم‌ترین مشخصه این دوران باشد." لینک
  https://anthropologyandculture.com/%d...