DEAD SAYS WHO? The Continuing Claims of Liberalism

I feel a certain zest, and a kind of encouragement, in finding myself, an unreconstructed liberal, in the pages of national review. Its editors apparently still labor under the antedeluvian notion that the opposition should have a chance to speak its piece. Despite their eagerness to declare liberalism dead, they show some regard, I can’t help but note, for one of liberalism’s contributions to the world. For the rest, I find my new environment quite familiar. I am surrounded, as usual, from the Left and the Right; and I observe that national review, a conservative periodical, has chosen to celebrate its birthday by talking about liberalism. In this preoccupation it is at one with the New York Review of Books. My first reaction to the question, “After liberalism, what?” is to wonder what radicals and conservatives will do with themselves if liberalism goes. They will be wandering around without a purpose in life.

The first thing, 1 suppose, in discussing liberalism and its assumed or desired demise is to try to be a bit clear about what “liberalism” means. And to do this, it is necessary to make a distinction between what I would call “critical liberalism” and “pop liberalism.”

CF

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Charles Frankel

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I feel a certain zest, and a kind of encouragement, in finding myself, an unreconstructed liberal, in the pages of national review. Its editors apparently still labor under the antedeluvian notion that the opposition should have a chance to speak its piece. Despite their eagerness to declare liberalism dead, they show some regard, I can’t help but note, for one of liberalism’s contributions to the world. For the rest, I find my new environment quite familiar. I am surrounded, as usual, from the Left and the Right; and I observe that national review, a conservative periodical, has chosen to celebrate its birthday by talking about liberalism. In this preoccupation it is at one with the New York Review of Books. My first reaction to the question, “After liberalism, what?” is to wonder what radicals and conservatives will do with themselves if liberalism goes. They will be wandering around without a purpose in life.

The first thing, 1 suppose, in discussing liberalism and its assumed or desired demise is to try to be a bit clear about what “liberalism” means. And to do this, it is necessary to make a distinction between what I would call “critical liberalism” and “pop liberalism.”