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The Return to Big Government Is Only Temporary |
| Section: CURRENT ISSUES / COMMENTARY |
| Author: H.W. Brands |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 2/1/2002 |
| Size: 2,009 Words, 12,518 Characters |
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To many people, this question might appear strange at a time when some decidedly antiliberal measures are either in place or afoot. Hundreds of individuals suspected of having ties to the terrorists of September 11 (or of simply knowing something about the attacks) languish in detention, the Bush administration is calling for military tribunals to try suspected terrorists without the bother of due process and other standard judicial safeguards, and probusiness conservatives in Congress are using the terrorist war to promote their favorite tax cuts.
HISTORICAL PRECEDENT
Yet there is historical reason to believe that current events might lift liberalism out of the doldrums where it has rested these past 30 years. The great age of modern liberalism in America was the period of the Cold War, in particular the late 1940s to the early 1970s, when Americans looked to government to solve all manner of social ills.
Definitions of liberalism have varied a great deal during the two centuries since the term originated in Europe (and European liberalism even today is often quite different from the American version). Here during the last several generations it has meant, above all, an inclination to employ the agencies of governme...
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...ger federal role in education, for instance, will sound more persuasive than they did just six months ago.
It may seem paradoxical that war, which elevates the sterner human virtues, can simultaneously provide a seedbed for liberalism, which is generally associated with the softer side of human nature. But such has occurred repeatedly in America's past, and such may well occur again. vbcrlf
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
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articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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