Yascha Mounk’s new book “The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time” arrives at a crucial juncture for American liberalism. In this timely and incisive work, Mounk confronts the rising ...

George Friedrich Hegel once remarked, “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” A paradox no doubt, but the modern liberal illustrates this truth. Don’t let the opening line of this ...

When I taught Contemporary Civilization, Columbia University’s core courses on political and moral philosophy from Plato through Freud, officially and awkwardly called “Introduction to Contemporary ...

In 1982 Ronald Steel won the National Book Award for his voluminous biography of the long-lived public intellectual Walter Lippmann (1889–1974), whose career as a journalist and author of middlebrow ...

Western liberalism begins with rights and designs society backwards. Dharma begins with relationships. It assumes you are born into a web of obligations, and that this web is a gift.

BARACK Obama might be exactly what his supporters suppose him to be. Not, however, for reasons most Americans will celebrate. Obama might be the fulfillment of modern liberalism. Explaining why many ...