What was Liberalism? : The Past, Present, and Promise of a Noble Idea

In the era of Trump and Marine le Pen, liberalism faces significant challenges. There is a growing fear that liberal values, once taken for granted, are now at risk from both authoritarian regimes abroad and a waning faith within liberal societies. This raises critical questions: What led to liberalism's decline in majority support? What makes it valuable? Award-winning journalist James Traub addresses these issues by tracing liberalism's history, from the American and French revolutions to the writings of John Stuart Mill and early twentieth-century American progressives. He examines liberalism's midcentury triumph in the West, its current vulnerabilities, and its uncertain future. Traub illustrates that liberalism began with a focus on individual liberty but evolved to balance freedom with justice and equality, opposing both economic exploitation and totalitarianism. This evolution also transformed the relationship between liberalism and democracy; while many nineteenth-century liberals were concerned about democracy's illiberal tendencies, by the mid-twentieth century, liberalism became a shared belief among a broad spectrum of Americans and Europeans. However, even as the liberal West triumphed post-Cold War, its foundations weakened under the pressures of economic inequality and complex issues of race and immigration, leading to a resurgence of liberalism's challenges in recent decades.