Does Liberalism Have a Future?

http://www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/mohler/?adate=3/4/2005#1316372

[Crosswalk.com] March 4, 2005--Martin Peretz is worried that liberalism has no future in America. Editor-in-Chief of The New Republic, Peretz writes of his concern in a major article published in the 90th anniversary issue of his magazine. "Not Much Left," is a cry from the heart, offered by Peretz to what remains of a liberal movement in America. Peretz begins by arguing that, in the 1960s, it was conservatism that was devoid of ideas and facing a dismal political future. In the words of economist John Kenneth Galbraith, conservatism was "bookless" and intellectually bankrupt. Now, Peretz argues it is liberalism "that is now bookless and dying." Peretz has good reason for alarm. He--and the magazine for which he writes--represent a form of liberalism that is now largely without constituency in the Democratic Party and the political left. Peretz longs for the day when the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt and the liberalism of Franklin Delano Roosevelt ruled the left and served as a fertile greenhouse for the incubation of potent political ideas.