Future Hindsight Equal Freedom: Alex Zakaras
Dec 4, 2025
Join Alex Zakaras, a political science professor at the University of Vermont and author of "Freedom for All," as he explores the potent concept of radical liberalism. He emphasizes the importance of equal freedom tied to essential services like healthcare and livable wages. Delve into how historical mobilization has expanded freedoms, the need to restore worker bargaining power, and the impact of local political engagement. Zakaras also discusses the urgency of civic participation in democracy and offers hopeful glimpses into worker-owned businesses as a path forward.
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What Liberalism Actually Means
- Liberalism centers on the goal of freedom and strategies like constitutions, rights, and markets to secure it.
- Radical liberalism reclaims liberal tools to expand substantive freedom for everyone, not just the affluent.
Freedom As Real Power
- Freedom means the real power to make meaningful life choices, not just formal rights.
- Access to healthcare, childcare, housing, and living wages expands people's practical freedom.
Mobilization Expands Freedom
- Major expansions of rights historically followed sustained popular mobilization.
- Democracy and organized citizen power are mutually reinforcing engines of expanding freedom.
