Abstract

In a feature study in Modern Age, and in two recent essays for Telos, the first a thoughtful review of my book, After Liberalism, James Kalb, an outspoken, erudite legal thinker, finds a family resemblance in liberal thinking from the late Middle Ages on. As explained in his essay “Liberalism: Ideal and Reality,” liberalism is “a continuous and coherent tradition.” “It is in fact a tradition that has endured for centuries. It is strongest in societies universally judged most successful, and is especially strong among the intelligent and most educated, most of whom can conceive of no other political position.”…