In the views of President Biden and likeminded liberals, the war in Ukraine is part of a global war against the forces of autocracy led by Russia and China, the latter of which is trying to demonstrate that its governing and economic models are superior to the West’s. Moreover, Mr. Biden and his allies contend that a vote against them is a vote for autocracy at home in the personification of former President Donald Trump, the leader of the failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election who is on track to be in the GOP nominee in 2024.
This focus on threats, real and perceived, to democracy and freedom both at home and abroad is a continuation of what Yale University historian Samuel Moyn labels “Cold War liberalism” — or a betrayal of liberalism’s prior emphasis on optimism, human progress and emancipation, as he explained in this episode of History As It Happens.
Mr. Moyn, the author of the provocative “Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times,” argues that it made sense for liberals to want to confront Soviet Communism until its collapse in 1991. But in the past three decades, even as politicians on the right and left called for a reset in U.S. foreign policy and a shift in priorities toward economic rights at home, Mr. Moyn says Cold War liberals, a grouping that includes Republicans and Democrats, failed to change.
“Liberalism needs to make some promises to people again and say freedom and inequality are not going to just materialize,” Mr. Moyn said.
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