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Podcast: New Books in American Politics
Episode: Russell Blackford, "How We Became Post-Liberal: The Rise and Fall of Toleration" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Description: Liberalism is in trouble. As a set of ideas, it has lost much of its historical authority in guiding public policy and personal behaviour. In this post-liberal climate, Russell Blackford asks whether liberalism is truly over.How We Became Post-Liberal: The Rise and Fall of Toleration (Bloomsbury, 2023) examines how Western liberal democracies became nations where traditional liberal principles of toleration (religious and otherwise), individual liberty and freedom of speech are frequently dismissed as outdated or twisted to support conservative policies. Blackford traces the lineage of liberalism from problems of toleration that emerged when Christianity triumphed in the l...