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The current liberal order is fading and has failed to deliver on some of its most fundamental promises. Yet, rather than taking flight from liberal order, this book suggests that liberal orders in the past always have been historically constituted and institutionally contested. Although liberal order's current crisis is not disputed, it suggests that the crisis has partly been constituted by the specific account of liberal order offered by ‘new liberalism’, which in its quest for a scientific method has shorn liberalism — and with it liberal order — of its critical and normative potential. The observation places liberal order's alleged crisis in a new light, where attention to liberal values and ordering practices invite consideration of those aspects of liberal order that are resilient and enduring.

Harry Brighouse’s essay concludes Part I of the book by taking up one aspect of the task of clarifying the role of common education, by applying it to the teaching of patriotism in public (common) schools. He asks whether liberal and cosmopolitan values are compatible with a common education aimed at fostering patriotic attachment to the nation. He examines numerous arguments recently developed to justify fostering patriotism in common schools from a liberal–democratic perspective, and finds them all wanting. However, even if liberal–democratic arguments for teaching patriotism could be found that withstand the criticisms he advances, Brighouse argues that common schools should avoid using history as the vehicle for fostering patriotic loyalty, since even the most honest, clear-sighted, unsentimental attempts to teach national history are likely to degrade and undermine the other purposes that teaching history properly has. The chapter proceeds as follows: Section 6.1, discusses briefly the justifications of patriotism and the further arguments that patriotism is something that should be taught to children in school – and in particular the argument that history is an appropriate vehicle for teaching it; Section 2 casts doubt on the arguments for patriotism and even more doubt on the idea that it should be taught; Section 6.3 argues that history is a discipline particularly inappropriate for conveying patriotic feeling; Section 6.4 concludes.

This chapter provides an empirical scrutiny of sprawl and liberal values—social trust, tolerance, and respect for diversity. It also provides an in-depth discussion of the neighbourhood characteristics of sprawl and its affinity with political conservatism—in conceptualizing the possibility of Rawls liberal egalitarian ideology as applied within the context of current American lifestyles. However, as Simone Chambers points out, for both notions of equal opportunity in political culture and conservative notions of present US distributive justice, which promote personal responsibility and legitimizing inequalities, Rawls' egalitarianism application on present US distributive justice is problematic. Results are not as “just” as Rawls would illustrate.

This chapter argues that the encounter of liberal and illiberal communities occurs in an epoch where the integration of national economies and the revolution in communication and transportation coincide with the survival of parochial and traditionalist attachments. The encounter compels consideration of the limits of liberal tolerance and the bases of social peace; whether individual rights and alleged rights of groups are fully reconcilable, whether group rights are derivative of individual rights or a distinct category of human entitlements, and it further requires us to consider the rights of majorities as well as minorities. Finally, it requires consideration of the compatibility of tolerance for illiberal ways of life with the long-term sustainability of liberal democracy. These issues are examined through the lenses of law and the moral values embedded in human rights norms (best expressed politically by American liberalism and European social democracy) which constitute a particular way of visualizing human dignity.

This chapter examines Anglican theologian George Grant's criticism on liberalism and his thoughts on the basis of liberal values. It analyses Grant's attack on John Rawl's liberalism in his book English-Speaking Justice. It argues that Grant misinterpreted Rawls' account of political liberalism and justice, and Rawls' more recent works escapes many of Grant's strictures. This chapter attempts to develop Grant's arguments to show that Rawls' account of the basis of value and his distinction of political and comprehensive doctrines may in practice still result in the subversion of liberal values.

This chapter examines the debate over liberal values as a central element of liberal world order. It considers a major dilemma facing liberals. The promotion of liberal values, including human rights, must be respectful of other cultures and societies, including their traditions and their values. At the same time, it must maintain that there are universal values valid for all, irrespective of local traditions and customs. There can be no denial of rights to life, liberty, security of the person, and protection against torture and racial discrimination. This chapter first considers liberalism's belief in progress toward an ever more liberal world as well as the link between progress and liberal values. It then explores progress in relation to the principles respected by sovereign states as members of the international society of states. It argues that liberals cannot support a policy of radical Liberalism of Restraint; they must be committed to some form of activism that will frequently come across as hostile Liberalism of Imposition.

This book has rejected a number of pessimistic scenarios for the current world order in view of liberal progress in the world rather than liberal crisis. Postmodern states are engaged in a security community, and international society's great respect for existing borders further reduces the relevance of the classical security dilemma. Although weak states are a serious problem, a “coming anarchy” with general breakdown of established states is not yet on the horizon. And while international terrorism is a formidable challenge, it is not a new, existential menace. However, this book has also identified a liberal dilemma related to the core liberal concept of freedom: it involves the choice between Restraint, non-intervention, tolerance, and empathy on the one hand, and Imposition, intervention, and activist promotion of universal liberal principles on the other hand. Finally, it has explored the liberal world order in relation to weak states, free markets, international institutions, and liberal values. The book concludes with a reconsideration of prospects for a liberal world order as well as liberal principles.

This chapter argues that Flaubert effectively implies and subverts a series of traditional liberal values—those of freedom, culture, judgment, and individual distinction—while nonetheless taking his “revenge” on those who would deny such values. After briefly considering how Flaubert's reprise of melancholy vitalism in Bouvard results in a form of what LaCapra has called “post-traumatic writing,” the chapter concludes by examining two variants of the late nineteenth-century French Liberal response to an agonistic quality inherent in the era's mounting democratism, contrasting the melancholy ambivalence or double-voicedness of Ernest Renan's writings circa 1871 with what the author calls the antiagonistic strategies of Flaubert's contemporaneous novels. Bouvard and Pécuchet actually take up the matter of universal suffrage on the tenth of December 1848, when “all the people of Chavignolles voted for Bonaparte.”

This chapter expands on terrorism's exploitation of liberal democracy and explains the main dilemmas that this generates for the liberal democratic state plagued by terrorism. States operating under liberal democratic values generally find themselves the target of terrorist attacks because the very system itself can easily facilitate, communicate, and amplify terrorism's prime commodity: fear. With the use of media coverage in part and with psychological manipulations of public opinion as a whole, terrorists can personalize their actions to instill the greatest possible amount of fear into the public, who will then pressure their decision makers into giving in to the terrorists' demands. Removing the freedoms afforded by modern democracies can limit opportunities for these attacks, albeit at the expense of undermining liberal democratic values.

In the conclusion, ways forward, located in five cross cutting domains, are proposed. Firstly, if many of the factors that place an older person at risk of impaired mental health are lifecourse and age-related inequalities it is axiomatic that policy should address these. Secondly, as the link between inequalities and health is accepted in the public health field, adopting a public mental health approach may hold considerable potential. There is also scope to refocus policy, services and practice in the dementia arena, including public and policy acknowledgment that some dementia risks are located in the lifecourse. Thirdly, when services are offered within the context of an older person’s lifecourse and life narrative it is possible to adopt a truly person-centred approach that upholds dignity and promotes quality of life. Refocusing research lenses is a fourth issue. This includes developing a concept of ‘late lifeadversity’, engaging to a greater degree with older people’s perspectives and effectively capturing links between lifecourse factors and mental health outcomes. Fifthly, there is a need to make visible the neo-liberal values that underpin policy. Mental health in later life is a political issue as well as a research, policy, service and health related concern.

The “Occupy Wall Street!” movement stimulated a long listing of other candidates for radical “occupation.” This chapter proposes as a target for radical occupation the somewhat unusual candidate of liberalism itself. It argues for a constructive engagement of radicals with liberalism in order to retrieve it for a radical egalitarian agenda. The premise is that the foundational values of liberalism have a radical potential that has not historically been realized, given the way the dominant varieties of liberalism have developed. Ten reasons standardly given as to why such a retrieval cannot be carried out are examined and argued to be fallacious.

This chapter considers the life of the late Jerzy Turowicz (1912–1999). Turowicz played a key role in the preservation of liberal values in Poland and in its re-emergence as a democratic and pluralistic state. As the long-standing editor of the independent Catholic weekly Tygodnik powszechny, he aired matters which were taboo in the official press, and also attempted to move the Polish Catholic Church to a more open and tolerant view of the world. This was not always an easy task. In 1951, he became editor of the paper, which was founded in 1945, and retained this position until his death, with only one hiatus. After the death of Stalin he was removed from his position because of his refusal to publish an obituary of the Soviet dictator, and the weekly was handed over to the pro-government Catholic grouping Pax. Turowicz returned as editor only in December 1956 after the Polish ‘October’ and the establishment of a national communist regime under Władysław Gomułka.

The Epilogue presents the story of the salary revolution from a wider perspective. It consists, it states, of two distinct through simultaneous transformations. The first involving payments and the other involving bounties. Why did this happen? Why did the system exist in the first place? The salary has, through a long process of trial and error, become integral to the vindication of liberal-republican values, the honoring of plural interest-group claims, and the popular acceptance of legislatively enacted programs in a democratic society.

This chapter evaluates how far the League movement realised its dream of a ‘democratised’ foreign policy between the wars, and addresses its fortunes after 1945, when the League of Nations Union (LNU) was reborn as the United Nations Association and found itself confronted with a dramatically altered world-order. The LNU never fully resolved the tension between intellectualism and emotionalism in political life. The risks to the LNU of abandoning its non-party status appear obvious. The LNU's civic strategy became an exercise in the bolting on of liberal-internationalist ideas to pre-existing loyalties and identities. The LNU did not generate the sort of ‘lifestyle’ or ‘identity’ politics associated with later social movements. The movement remained a centrist force in British politics and society, preserving a place for liberal-internationalist values in post-war associational life, albeit on a far less remarkable scale than in earlier times.

Thomas Blom Hansen argues that the increasing strictures on freedom of speech in India, and the shrinking tolerance for dissenting ideas and opposition to the government since 2014, has deeper roots in how the relationship between the Indian state and the broader public has developed since the 1970s. Hansen focuses on how this relationship has been increasingly governed by two kinds of violence: a) a growth of the Indian state’s repressive capacities and an unchecked development of violent modalities of policing and control that disproportionately affects lower caste communities and religious and ethnic minorities in the country, and b) the increasingly routinized use of public violence – mob violence, destruction of public property, etc. – as a legitimate means of political expression and performance of grievances and anger. Hansen argues that larger groups across India have been mobilized around emotional attachments to their vernacular political communities, their caste and to perceived injustices in the name of popular sovereignty that is understood to exist beyond the state and electoral representation. Today, the limitations of politics, public violence, or the threat thereof, are no longer one of the most legitimate means of political (self) expression in the country.

This chapter focuses on the moral implications for children of parents living double lives. It brings to light how double-life parents often tried to subtly introduce new ideas to their children despite keeping their life–changing doubt secret. It also highlights the influence of double life parents that led to ethical and emotional dilemmas for their children, especially for ultra-Orthodox teenagers. The chapter explains how choice was part of the double-life moral system, which is in direct contrast to ultra-Orthodoxy but is aligned with contemporary American liberal values about the individual. The chapter describes the double lifers' moral framework as individuals that used their autonomy to make ethical choices in the context of their secretly shared liberal values of pluralism, tolerance, and striving for personal fulfilment.

This chapter presents an in-depth analysis of the root and instrumental causes and goals underlying Islamist terrorism. To understand Islamist-jihadist terrorism in general, and the phenomenon of suicide terrorism in particular, it behooves Western decision makers steeped in liberal democratic values to take a step back and begin to view the impetus for terrorism from the perspective of the terrorists themselves. Decision making within terrorist ranks are complicated affairs, influenced by myriad social, political, and even personal considerations. Yet certain commonalities arise within the terrorist rationale that points to influences created via propaganda, indoctrination, and incitement as they are grounded in religious justifications, interpretations, and commandments, if not in a single member's susceptibility to personal and social-organizational factors such as peer pressure or a desire for revenge. Understanding these varied considerations is crucial to exploring the rationale behind specific types of terrorist attack.