August 14, 2007
Federalism and Liberalism Jacob T. Levy says that welfare liberalism and classical liberalism—the “new” and “old” liberalisms of this volume’s title—
face the rationalist-pluralist trade-off in fundamentally the same ways and for the same reasons, sharing a commitment both to freedom from the dictates of the central state and to freedom from local despotisms; and in this both liberalisms differ from other ideologies and philosophical systems. Ley talks in terms of the commonalities and continuities between classical liberalism and welfare liberalism, to see them as belonging to a common intellectual genus, notwithstanding the partisans of each who occasionally ry to read the other out of the liberal tradition.
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