Liberalism?</p> If war is the force that gives us meaning, Country Email List as Chris Hedges wrote in his famous book, what purpose remains when the final battle has been won? This question made many American intellectuals uncomfortable at the end of the Country Email List Cold War, when the United States assumed a geopolitical position without rivals to match it. For those who stayed too long in the ideological trenches, it was impossible to leave that question Country Email List behind. Skeptical of the idea that the challenges facing the.
United States could be solved through technocratic adjustments, they Country Email List found it hard to believe that the country would now be safe. For three decades, these characters have been poised to ring the bell as new enemies appear on the horizon. This bellicose posture is a significant legacy of Cold War liberalism , a political position on which there are still interpretive Country Email List disputes, although the historical conditions that originated it are clear. Before World War I, being a liberal generally meant defending universal values and rationalism. Liberals had an optimistic outlook on human nature and believed in historical Country Email List progress. But the rise of fascist regimes and the mobilization of global military forces required to end Nazism dealt a.
Hlow to this vision. In the aftermath of World War II, new threats arose Country Email List with Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, and then Castro's Cuba. If liberalism had any chance to survive, it would have to become more aggressive in its defense of liberty against the specter of communist totalitarianism. For the intellectuals of the Cold War, both outside and inside the academy, Country Email Listliberal democracy was not destined to triumph.It was fragile and needed constant defense . Intellectuals and political decision-makers such as WW Rostow, John Kenneth Galbraith, Country Email List and Isaiah Berlin believed that the security of the people depended on the.