The Specious Origins of Liberalism
The Specious Origins of Liberalism

Author: Anthony M. Ludovici

Publisher:

Published: 2019-05-18

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9781646066674

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First published as a series of articles in The South African Observer in the 1960s, this work provides a fascinating historical-philosophical analysis of the origin of modern liberalism. Starting with an analysis of what liberalism is, this book reviews the ideological origin--among the upper classes of society--of the notion of liberalism, and then moves through its historical development to the present day, where, he concludes, the "worst misapprehension of all is to suppose that all this Liberal misunderstanding of human nature can possibly fail in the end to pervert and corrupt the nation and wipe out all the accumulated treasure in virtue and sanity which has been fostered and stored during former, more rational and more tasteful times." As the author says in the preface: "Among the many remarkable changes witnessed in my lifetime, none has struck me more forcibly than that which has occurred in the relative importance of Religion and Politics. "For, whereas in my childhood and youth religion was still the principal field where fervour and fanaticism reigned, it has been my fate to see political doctrines and ideologies completely supersede it in all adult minds. "In my youth there was certainly hostility and rivalry between Liberals and Conservatives; but however bitter the antagonism, it never went to the length of branding the other side as "indecent", "disreputable" or actually "despicable". Yet to-day Liberalism has attained to this height of arrogance and presumption. "This book is therefore an attempt in this eleventh hour of expiring sanity to expose (he false assumptions and truculent vacuity of these very tenets and principles, and to outline a constructive means of combating them."

Breeding Superman
Breeding Superman

Author: Dan Stone

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2002-01-01

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9780853239871

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Elizabeth A. Kaye specializes in communications as part of her coaching and consulting practice. She has edited Requirements for Certification since the 2000-01 edition.

The Strange Non-death of Neo-liberalism
The Strange Non-death of Neo-liberalism

Author: Colin Crouch

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-26

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 0745637590

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The financial crisis seemed to present a fundamental challenge to neo liberalism, the body of ideas that have constituted the political orthodoxy of most advanced economies in recent decades. Colin Crouch argues in this book that it will shrug off this challenge. The reason is that while neo liberalism seems to be about free markets, in practice it is concerned with the dominance over public life of the giant corporation. This has been intensified, not checked, by the recent financial crisis and acceptance that certain financial corporations are ‘too big to fail'. Although much political debate remains preoccupied with conflicts between the market and the state, the impact of the corporation on both these is today far more important. Several factors have brought us to this situation: The lobbying power of firms whose donations are of growing importance to cash-hungry politicians and parties The weakening of competitive forces by firms large enough to shape and dominate their markets The moral initiative that is grasped by enterprises that devise their own agendas of corporate social responsibility Both democratic politics and the free market are weakened by these processes, but they are largely inevitable and not always malign. Hope for the future, therefore, cannot lie in suppressing them in order to attain either an economy of pure markets or a socialist society. Rather it lies in dragging the giant corporation fully into political controversy.

The Twilight Years
The Twilight Years

Author: Richard Overy

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2010-11-30

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 110149834X

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From a leading British historian, the story of how fear of war shaped modern England By the end of World War I, Britain had become a laboratory for modernity. Intellectuals, politicians, scientists, and artists?among them Arnold Toynbee, Aldous Huxley, and H. G. Wells?sought a vision for a rapidly changing world. Coloring their innovative ideas and concepts, from eugenics to Freud?s unconscious, was a creeping fear that the West was staring down the end of civilization. In their home country of Britain, many of these fears were unfounded. The country had not suffered from economic collapse, occupation, civil war, or any of the ideological conflicts of inter-war Europe. Nevertheless, the modern era?s promise of progress was overshadowed by a looming sense of decay and death that would deeply influence creative production and public argument between the wars. In The Twilight Years, award-winning historian Richard Overy examines the paradox of this period and argues that the coming of World War II was almost welcomed by Britain?s leading thinkers, who saw it as an extraordinary test for the survival of civilization? and a way of resolving their contradictory fears and hopes about the future.

From the Big Bang to Obama
From the Big Bang to Obama

Author: Jeff Willerton

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2012-04

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13: 1770677461

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Throughout modern history there have been primarily two political camps in our world. They manifest themselves in different ways, but one, though hardly living up to the ideal, at least believes in freedom, equality and individual responsibility; the other in the collective. Judging by his actions and who he keeps company with, the 44th president of the United States of America has revealed, for all the world to see, which camp he's in.

The Morbid Age
The Morbid Age

Author: Richard Overy

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2009-05-07

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 0141930861

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British intellectual life between the wars stood at the heart of modernity. The combination of a liberal, uncensored society and a large educated audience for new ideas made Britain a laboratory for novel ways to understand the world. The Morbid Age opens a window onto this creative but anxious era, the golden age of the public intellectual and scientist: Arnold Toynbee, Aldous and Julian Huxley, H. G. Wells, Marie Stopes and a host of others. Yet, as Richard Overy argues, a striking characteristic of so many of the ideas that emerged from this new age - from eugenics to Freud's unconscious, to modern ideas of pacifism and world government - was the fear that the West was facing a possibly terminal crisis of civilization. The modern era promised progress of a kind, but it was overshadowed by a growing fear of decay and death, an end to the civilized world and the arrival of a new Dark Age - even though the country had suffered no occupation, no civil war and none of the bitter ideological rivalries of inter-war Europe, and had an economy that survived better than most. The Morbid Age explores how this strange paradox came about. Ultimately, Overy shows, the coming of war was almost welcomed as a way to resolve the contradictions and anxieties of this period, a war in which it was believed civilization would be either saved or utterly destroyed.

The Dharma Manifesto
The Dharma Manifesto

Author: Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya

Publisher: Arktos

Published: 2013-11-02

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1907166327

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The Dharma Manifesto is a call to action for those who seek a form of social and political action that has a firm spiritual foundation, but which also challenges the prevailing social and religious order in the postmodern West. It does not merely offer criticism - it is also a blueprint for how a national community founded upon Dharmic principles could operate in the twenty-first century. Its author defines the term "Dharma," which in the ancient Sanskrit language means "Natural Law," in an unconventional way. For those who embrace Dharma Nationalism, Dharma is predicated upon the pressing need for the organic and munificent resacralization of culture and of all human endeavor, as well as the manifestation of the highest potentials attainable by every individual in society in accordance with transcendental principles. Thus, Dharma does not only refer to traditions with which it is usually associated such as Hinduism and Buddhism, but also to the Taoist, Confucian, Zoroastrian, Native American, and European pagan traditions, all of which, this book holds, share a common, basic worldview. This book is therefore a resource for those who want to carry out both an inward, contemplative revolution within themselves as well an outer, social revolution in the world around them, in harmony with one another. It is intended to serve as a systematic program signaling the beginning of a what will hopefully be a new era in humanity's eternal yearning for meaningful freedom and happiness.

Liberalism
Liberalism

Author:

Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute

Published:

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1610164083

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This is Mises's classic statement in defense of a free society, one of the last statements of the old liberal school and a text from which we can continue to learn. It has been the conscience of a global movement for liberty for 80 years. This edition, from the Mises Institute, features a new foreword by Thomas Woods. It first appeared in 1927, as a followup to both his devastating 1922 book showing that socialism would fail, and his 1926 book on interventionism. It was written to address the burning question: if not socialism, and if not fascism or interventionism, what form of social arrangements are most conducive to human flourishing? Mises's answer is summed up in the title, by which he meant classical liberalism. Mises did more than restate classical doctrine. He gave a thoroughly modern defense of freedom, one that corrected the errors of the old liberal school by rooting the idea of liberty in the institution of private property (a subject on which the classical school was sometimes unclear). Here is the grand contribution of this volume. "The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production... All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand." But there are other insights too. He shows that political decentralization and secession are the best means to peace and political liberty. As for religion, he recommends the complete separation of church and state. On immigration, he favors the freedom of movement. On culture, he praised the political virtue of tolerance. On education: state involvement must end, and completely. He deals frankly with the nationalities problem, and provides a stirring defense of rationalism as the essential foundation of liberal political order. He discusses political strategy, and the relationship of liberalism to special-interest politics. In some ways, this is the most political of Mises's treatises, and also one of the most inspiring books ever written on the idea of liberty. It remains the book that can set the world on fire for freedom, which is probably why it has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Bland Fanatics
Bland Fanatics

Author: Pankaj Mishra

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0374711909

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A wide-ranging, controversial collection of critical essays on the political mania plaguing the West by one of the most important public intellectuals of our time. In America and in England, faltering economies at home and failed wars abroad have generated a political and intellectual hysteria. It is a derangement manifested in a number of ways: nostalgia for imperialism, xenophobic paranoia, and denunciations of an allegedly intolerant left. These symptoms can be found even among the most informed of Anglo-America. In Bland Fanatics, Pankaj Mishra examines the politics and culture of this hysteria, challenging the dominant establishment discourses of our times. In essays that grapple with the meaning and content of Anglo-American liberalism and its relations with colonialism, the global South, Islam, and “humanitarian” war, Mishra confronts writers such as Jordan Peterson, Niall Ferguson, and Salman Rushdie. He describes the doubling down of an intelligentsia against a background of weakening Anglo-American hegemony, and he explores the commitments of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the ideological determinations of The Economist. These essays provide a vantage point from which to understand the current crisis and its deep origins.

The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy
The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy

Author: David Shearman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2007-08-30

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0313345058

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This provocative book presents compelling evidence that the fundamental problem behind environmental destruction—and climate change in particular—is the operation of liberal democracy. Climate change threatens the future of civilization, but humanity is impotent in effecting solutions. Even in those nations with a commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions, they continue to rise. This failure mirrors those in many other spheres that deplete the fish of the sea, erode fertile land, destroy native forests, pollute rivers and streams, and utilize the world's natural resources beyond their replacement rate. In this provocative book, Shearman and Smith present evidence that the fundamental problem causing environmental destruction—and climate change in particular—is the operation of liberal democracy. Its flaws and contradictions bestow upon government—and its institutions, laws, and the markets and corporations that provide its sustenance—an inability to make decisions that could provide a sustainable society. Having argued that democracy has failed humanity, the authors go even further and demonstrate that this failure can easily lead to authoritarianism without our even noticing. Even more provocatively, they assert that there is merit in preparing for this eventuality if we want to survive climate change. They are not suggesting that existing authoritarian regimes are more successful in mitigating greenhouse emissions, for to be successful economically they have adopted the market system with alacrity. Nevertheless, the authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power. There are in existence highly successful authoritarian structures—for example, in medicine and in corporate empires—that are capable of implementing urgent decisions impossible under liberal democracy. Society is verging on a philosophical choice between liberty or life. But there is a third way between democracy and authoritarianism that the authors leave for the final chapter. Having brought the reader to the realization that in order to halt or even slow the disastrous process of climate change we must choose between liberal democracy and a form of authoritarian government by experts, the authors offer up a radical reform of democracy that would entail the painful choice of curtailing our worldwide reliance on growth economies, along with various legal and fiscal reforms. Unpalatable as this choice may be, they argue for the adoption of this fundamental reform of democracy over the journey to authoritarianism.