The way out of liberalism’s crisis is not to abandon liberalism. It is to recover its radical spirit. Liberals should once again be the people who hate monopoly, inherited advantage, closed systems and rigged games. They should champion real competition, real meritocracy and real equality of opportunity. They should take on corporate power when it crushes markets, government power when it protects insiders and cultural power when it creates bureaucracies that substitute group identity for individual dignity.
As Wooldridge argues, the center cannot be merely a midpoint between left and right. It has to be revolutionary in its own way. Liberalism’s great promise was never that people would be left alone to decay in freedom. It was that people would be given the tools, rules and responsibilities necessary to flourish.
Liberalism began as a revolt against encrusted power. It will survive only if it becomes one again.
Edit: Basically, the fight against everyone else is to promote meritocracy, markets and competition. Basically the same talk 19th century liberalism did.
continuing the article
The way out of liberalism’s crisis is not to abandon liberalism. It is to recover its radical spirit. Liberals should once again be the people who hate monopoly, inherited advantage, closed systems and rigged games. They should champion real competition, real meritocracy and real equality of opportunity. They should take on corporate power when it crushes markets, government power when it protects insiders and cultural power when it creates bureaucracies that substitute group identity for individual dignity.
As Wooldridge argues, the center cannot be merely a midpoint between left and right. It has to be revolutionary in its own way. Liberalism’s great promise was never that people would be left alone to decay in freedom. It was that people would be given the tools, rules and responsibilities necessary to flourish.
Liberalism began as a revolt against encrusted power. It will survive only if it becomes one again.
Edit: Basically, the fight against everyone else is to promote meritocracy, markets and competition. Basically the same talk 19th century liberalism did.