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May 25, 2007
James Madison in Federalist No. 55, argued that Republican government required a specific kind virtue in its citizens than any other form. That argument about the kind of citizens a liberal democracy needs to have is shared by William Galston and Steven Macedo. A liberal polity requires its citizens to have certain civic skills (deliberation, compromise, consensus-building, civility, reason-giving)--and the public spaces where those skills can be exercised.
Ordered liberty requires citizens who are independent of mind, public-spirited, respectful of the rule of law, capable of self-restraint, aware of their rights, and respectful of the rights of others. The egalitarian and welfare aspirations to which we have committed ourselves in modern times require even more: a modicum of fellow-feeling, as well as a certain disposition to assume responsibility for oneself and one's dependents. However, the spaces for civic engagement have been shrinking, as the country has been losing many of the associations and institutions where republican skills and virtues are generated, nurtured, and transmitted from one generation to the next.
Where disagreement emerges is less about the qualities that are required than about how and by whom they should be fostered, and the role of religion in fostering them. What can or should we do to instill the skills, habits and virtues required for the survival and flourishing of free, democratic institutions in a pluralistic society?
William Galston argued that the liberal state must become far more actively involved in reproducing the conditions necessary to its own health and perpetuation, but it must do so without undermining the capacious tolerance that gives liberal society its special attraction.
The conservatives argue that the liberation movements of the late sixties and early seventies undermined the cultural foundations of the republic. Those years of adult "liberation"and social revolution took a dreadful toll on children, and on the nation's principal seedbeds of character and competence--families and their surrounding communities of memory and mutual aid. What was rejected was the cultivation of the self-restraint that makes social life possible. The social revolution of 1968 produced a nation of free riders, coasting along on a dwindling social capital.
What is missing in this kind of argument is the effects of the shift to the free market on the formation of citizenship.
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l am studying welfare, l have an assignment due in community development on the historical origins of liberalism, and l'm lost just can't work out a lot of it. Could you provide me a step by step overview of the history of liberalism? Please help if you are able. thankyou
louise