Quotes About Liberalism

A noble, articulate, mixed-race liberal icon takes over the Presidency of the United States. Does he make the world a better place? No, he does not. A narcissistic sociopath with a thin skin and a bad dye job disgraces the Presidency of the United States. Does he make the world a worse place? No, he does not.

Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.

The liberal spirit is the breath of liberal democracy. And the liberal spirit is something instantly recognizable but very difficult to define. It has about it a refreshing common sense... It is even-tempered, and of even tempo... Reform, and constant reform, is a necessity of democracy. But reform in a hurry... is jerry-built, and it blows down in the first storm.

Violence, of course, is generally associated with frankly totalitarian forms of anti-political utopianism like Communism, but the Second World War shows that liberal universalists are as capable of violence as Communists. They are just less capable of honesty.

Some fundamentalists have done their best to turn the term Christian into a dirty word, signifying all that is narrow-minded and bigoted and self-righteous. But then, a hundred years ago, the sloppy liberals at the other end of the philosophical spectrum tried to turn it into a formless generic term, where a "Christian" was anyone who had ever had an occasional urge to be a nice guy.

La historia del liberalismo mexicano y de su triunfo fue, en buena medida, la historia de una coerción modernizadora sobre un país sellado por sus tradiciones feudales.

Mr. Giuliani's liabilities as a G.O.P. candidate were obvious. There was his well-documented history of cultural liberalism - on abortion, gay rights, immigration and gun control - which he tried, unsuccessfully, to mask. And then there was his style - bland, uninspiring, even soporific.

So maybe there are three parts in my life - earlier background living in exile in Xinjiang in a very political circumstance, then later the United States from 24 to 36 years old. I was quite equipped with liberal thinking. Then the Internet. If there is no Internet, of course, I cannot really exercise my opinion or my ideas.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the liberal story shaped not only the foreign policy of the United States and its allies, but also the domestic policies of governments across the world, from South Africa to Indonesia.

Liberal progressivism evolved after our Constitution. It has repeatedly failed all over the world so why do we think it could be successful here in the United States of America?

In the United States of America, we are so liberal-minded on so many different aspects, but for some reason there's always going to be this weird connection with nudity being a bad thing. Americans can be so prude sometimes.

I'm a huge supporter of women. What I'm not a supporter of liberalism. Feminism is what I oppose. Feminism has led women astray. I love the women's movement, especially walking behind it.

There will be trying times during Obama's presidency, and liberty will need staunch defenders. Can Obama reshape liberalism to be, as it was under F.D.R., a fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense of liberty? That would be a service to our country.

Swearing off economic liberalism also prevented Democrats from capitalizing on the great, glaring contradiction of their rivals' campaign, namely, the GOP's tendency to demote "values" issues once elections are over.

What is certain is that the liberalism of scolding will never give rise to the kind of mass movement that this country needs.

This is modern liberalism in action: an unregulated virtue-exchange in which representatives of one class of humanity ritually forgive the sins of another class, all of it convened and facilitated by a vast army of well-graduated American professionals, their reassuring expertise propped up by bogus social science, while the unfortunate objects of their high and noble compassion sink slowly back into a preindustrial state.

The conservative social critique always boils down to the same simple message: liberalism - meaning everything from racy TV to deconstructionists in the Yale French Department - is an affectation of the loathsome rich, as bizarre as their taste for Corgi dogs and extra-virgin olive oil.

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

I'd never get elected if people in North Carolina realized how liberal I am.

Whereas in Western countries the constitution merely had to guarantee the rights of a per-existing civil society and culture, in Russia it also had to create these. It had to educate society - and the state itself - into the values and ideas of liberal constitutionalism.

Hence, for liberals, black people are to be included and integrated into our society and culture, while for conservatives they are to be well behaved and worthy of acceptance by our way of life. Both fail to see that the presence and predicaments of black people are neither additions to nor defections from American life, but rather constitutive elements of that life.

Although victimism can trace its lineage to liberalism, it is not itself liberalism. Nor is it updated Christianity. It militates against ideas of equity, fairness, and process; its natural tone is one of assertion of prerogatives, a demand for reparations.

Modern liberalism's perfectionist ambitions - reflected in its progenitor (and current euphemism), progressivism - seeks to harness the power of government, the mystique of science and the rule of experts to shape both society and citizen and bring them both, willing or not, to a higher state of being.