Liberalism Against Itself – Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times

In the aftermath of the Second World War, many prominent liberals looked towards the future with eyes of disillusion and fear. In response they jettisoned key progressive ideals of the Enlightenment, such as equality and perfectibility, and formulated a defence of liberty in opposition to communism and totalitarianism more generally. In his new book, Samuel Moyn argues that the intellectual architects of Cold War liberalism truncated the liberal tradition and thereby left a disastrous legacy, leaving liberals unable to address the problems that face us today.