The Lost History of Liberalism
From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century
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Narrated by:
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Xe Sands
About this listen
The changing face of the liberal creed from the ancient world to today
The Lost History of Liberalism challenges our most basic assumptions about a political creed that has become a rallying cry - and a term of derision - in today's increasingly divided public square. Taking listeners from ancient Rome to today, Helena Rosenblatt traces the evolution of the words "liberal" and "liberalism", revealing the heated debates that have taken place over their meaning.
In this timely and provocative book, Rosenblatt debunks the popular myth of liberalism as a uniquely Anglo-American tradition centered on individual rights. She reveals that it was the French Revolution that gave birth to liberalism and Germans who transformed it. Only in the mid-20th century did the concept become widely known in the United States - and then, as now, its meaning was hotly debated.
Liberals were originally moralists at heart. They believed in the power of religion to reform society, emphasized the sanctity of the family, and never spoke of rights without speaking of duties. It was only during the Cold War and America's growing world hegemony that liberalism was refashioned into an American ideology focused so strongly on individual freedoms.
Today, we still can't seem to agree on liberalism's meaning. In the United States, a "liberal" is someone who advocates big government, while in France, big government is contrary to "liberalism". Political debates become befuddled because of semantic and conceptual confusion. The Lost History of Liberalism sets the record straight on a core tenet of today's political conversation and lays the foundations for a more constructive discussion about the future of liberal democracy.
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Hailed as the “first freedom”, free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat. In Free Speech, Jacob Mchangama traces the riveting legal, political, and cultural history of this idea.
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Great review of free speech and history
- By Anonymous User on 02-22-22
By: Jacob Mchangama
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Freethinkers
- A History of American Secularism
- By: Susan Jacoby
- Narrated by: Rich Miller
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby traces more than 200 years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution.
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Essential history of free thought in America
- By Clark Savage on 11-27-17
By: Susan Jacoby
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Behold, America
- The Entangled History of "America First" and "the American Dream"
- By: Sarah Churchwell
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of 20th-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases - the "American dream" and "America First" - that once embodied opposing visions for America. Starting as a Republican motto before becoming a hugely influential isolationist slogan during World War I, America First was always closely linked with authoritarianism and white supremacy. The American dream, meanwhile, initially represented a broad vision of democratic and economic equality.
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History we need to know
- By Caroline Pufalt on 12-09-18
By: Sarah Churchwell
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Churchill's Trial
- Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government
- By: Dr. Larry Arnn
- Narrated by: Wayne Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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A penetrating look at the necessity of constitutional limits upon government and exceptional men to lead those governments, uniquely taken by overlaying the life and writings of Winston Churchill with the American experiment.
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A Masterpiece of Political Philosophy
- By Jean on 01-25-16
By: Dr. Larry Arnn
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The Demon in Democracy
- Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
- By: Ryszard Legutko, John O'Sullivan, Teresa Adelson
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades - and he fought with the Polish anti-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature.
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Important book on political philosophy
- By Wayne on 08-02-19
By: Ryszard Legutko, and others
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From the Ruins of Empire
- The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia
- By: Pankaj Mishra
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A little more than a century ago, as the Japanese navy annihilated the giant Russian one at the Battle of Tsushima, original thinkers across Asia, working independently, sought to frame a distinctly Asian intellectual tradition that would inform and inspire the continent's anticipated rise to dominance.
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Breathtaking Scale, Cohesion and Vision of Asian History
- By Oscar C. Huerta on 03-18-19
By: Pankaj Mishra
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The Civil War as a Theological Crisis
- By: Mark A. Noll
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Although Christian believers agreed with one another that the Bible was authoritative and that it should be interpreted through commonsense principles, there was rampant disagreement about what Scripture taught about slavery. Furthermore, most Americans continued to believe that God ruled over the affairs of people and nations, but they were radically divided in their interpretations of what God was doing in and through the war.
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Nice addition to History of U.S. Religious Culture
- By Lisa Larges on 06-04-12
By: Mark A. Noll
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Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life
- By: Jonathan Sperber
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 22 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Returning Marx to the Victorian confines of the 19th century, Jonathan Sperber, one of the United States' leading European historians, challenges many of our misconceptions of this political firebrand turned London journalist. In this deeply humanizing portrait, Marx no longer is the Olympian soothsayer, divining the dialectical imperatives of human history, but a scholar-activist whose revolutionary Weltanschauung was closer to Robespierre's than to those of 20th-century Marxists.
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Informative intellectual biography, poor reading
- By anonymous on 10-25-13
By: Jonathan Sperber
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Inglorious Empire
- What the British Did to India
- By: Shashi Tharoor
- Narrated by: Shashi Tharoor
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 18th century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannons, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalized racism, and caused millions to die from starvation. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial "gift" was designed in Britain's interests alone.
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An entertaining and provocative history
- By James Moseley on 01-07-20
By: Shashi Tharoor
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a fine idea stuffed in a dead horse and beat
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Needs Guest Narrators for French and German
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On Politics
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Both a history and an examination of human thought and behavior spanning three thousand years, On Politics thrillingly traces the origins of political philosophy from the ancient Greeks to Machiavelli in Book I and from Hobbes to the present age in Book II. Whether examining Lord Acton's dictum that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" or explicating John Stuart Mill's contention that it is "better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied," Alan Ryan evokes the lives and minds of our greatest thinkers in a way that makes hearing about them a transcendent experience.
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Simply no book quite like this
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Regime Change
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From Notre Dame professor and author of Why Liberalism Failed comes a provocative call for replacing the tyranny of the self-serving liberal elite with conservative leaders aligned with the interests of the working class.
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A New Political Vision
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Of the three dominant ideologies of the 20th century - fascism, communism, and liberalism - only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism's proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions.
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a fine idea stuffed in a dead horse and beat
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Simply no book quite like this
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From Notre Dame professor and author of Why Liberalism Failed comes a provocative call for replacing the tyranny of the self-serving liberal elite with conservative leaders aligned with the interests of the working class.
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A New Political Vision
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What listeners say about The Lost History of Liberalism
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-05-19
Educative and informative
This was a great information about Liberalism. it feels like I have read 10 books in one. Without the opinionated comments about Liberalism.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Alexandre
- 09-09-23
good book, but bad audio
The book contains many interesting facts and shows a very long and twisted way of Liberalism, which highlights it's ambiguousness very well.
It's s a shame though, that the audio volume is not properly adjusted, which makes it impossible to listen to with phone in even just a little noise. Just turn up the volume god damn it, is it so hard!?
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- Emil
- 09-30-24
I enjoyed this history of Liberalism
I enjoyed it, especially the parts dealing with German and French Liberalism which I was less familiar with. I think my only criticism is that in the last two chapters it was not communicated that Liberals still are in favor of many of the social policies they are politically opposed to. The means versus ends debate is really relevant. I also think that when Rawls was included maybe there should have been some Nozick. I'm also a little disappointed that it ended without mentioning people I would consider to be liberals such as Friedman, Rothbard or even more radical figures.
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- Mike Cooper
- 02-14-23
Great history, much needed
Worth the listen. A long history of liberalism and how the fights today go back.
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- E. C. Guzzo
- 10-31-19
Narrator made the history of liberalism sexy
I love this narrator's voice and love the way she delivers the prose typical of academic nonfiction. Many narrator's read in an elevated, almost arrogant tone for "serious" political work. That approach is annoying. I wish this narrator did more nonfiction!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 12-25-20
Interesting but in the end self-defeating
The book traces the use of the word liberal/ism through its use throughout western history and paints an interesting portrayal of some notable figures in the history of liberalism. The author also does considerable work to dismantle or nuance the unlucky distinction between modern and classical liberalism.
In the quest to shine a light on the continental history of liberalism however, the author inevitably falls prey to the same temptation as she argues plagues so much of the contemporary history of liberalism - to belittle or ignore notable works of authors and political thinkers outside of the preferred school or region. In some parts, the book verges in on the line of downright revisionism.
The author also portrays a typical straw-man of contemporary liberalism as an atomistic ideology hellbent on destroying social cooperation and morals, not unlike the ones she criticize for being unfair in historical portrayals of liberals.
The dichotomy between enforcing rights/ methodological individualism and a moral, pluralistic and empathic liberalism is obviously faulty and the book names more than a few thinkers who are known for this very idea, but whose ideas about this are outright ignored. (E.g. Smith, Mill, Berlin, Rawls and even Hayek)
In sum the book puts a spotlight on a number of interesting uses and characteristics of liberalism throughout western history, but the book is also severely flawed and in some sense self-defeating in itself being an example of a politicized history, and unjust critique of liberalism.
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2 people found this helpful