Adrian Wooldridge on the Lost Genius of the Political Center
The Good Fight
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Yascha Mounk and Adrian Wooldridge explore how liberalism reinvented itself through past crises—and what that means for its survival today.
Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He is the author or co-author of 12 books, including Centrists of the World Unite: The Lost Genius of Liberalism.
In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Adrian Wooldridge discuss how liberalism emerged as a solution to concrete historical problems, why the fundamental challenges liberalism addressed in the 17th and 18th centuries have returned in new forms today, and what lessons the origins of liberalism offer for defending it against contemporary threats.
We’re delighted to feature this conversation as part of our series on Liberal Virtues and Values.
That liberalism is under threat is now a cliché—yet this has done nothing to stem the global resurgence of illiberalism. Part of the problem is that liberalism is often considered too “thin” to win over the allegiance of citizens, and that liberals are too afraid of speaking in moral terms. Liberalism’s opponents, by contrast, speak to people’s passions and deepest moral sentiments.
This series, made possible with the generous support of the John Templeton Foundation, aims to change that narrative. In podcast conversations and long-form pieces, we feature content making the case that liberalism has its own distinctive set of virtues and values that are capable not only of responding to the dissatisfaction that drives authoritarianism, but also of restoring faith in liberalism as an ideology worth believing in—and defending—on its own terms.
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Email: leonora.barclay@persuasion.community
Podcast production by Mickey Freeland and Leonora Barclay.
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