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This has always confused me. There are some rich texts based on beautiful rigor on the side of the conservatives like freidman and Hayek. Goldwater also approac

This has always confused me. There are some rich texts based on beautiful rigor on the side of the conservatives like freidman and Hayek. Goldwater also approaches things in a very principled manner. Arthur brooks' latest book is similar. On the other than, I have not come across any liberal text, yet, that makes a good convincing case for liberalism. I would love to get some recommendations. I'm interested in principled arguments for liberalism. If there are so many highly educated people who are liberal, I would assume there are certain foundational texts that argue their position. Basically, I'm looking for "freedom to choose" of the left.

sandworm101 10y ago
I think the point is that there are no defined left-wing foundational texts, that it arises with education across disciplines. Liberalism is a product of a variety of educations, not the creation of any one person or group. Read scientific studies on animal migration patterns. Then hit basic astronomy. Then particle physics. Then every episode of the Simpsons.
todd8 10y ago
A classic text on the philosophical underpinnings of (US) liberalism with regard to economic redistribution policies is A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, a renowned professor of philosophy at Harvard. After reading Rawls, I'd suggest maybe reading Robert Nozick's libertarian leaning Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick was another distinguished philosopher from Harvard writing about the same time as Rawls. Nozick comes to a completely different conclusion than Rawls. Both books are good and completely accessible to an ordinary reader (i.e. philosophy degree not required). However, they are serious and not as entertaining as the Friedmans' Free to Choose. While the two philosophy books address the question of what should a fair society look like from a philosophical perspective, I feel they don't address the aspects of human nature that have proven troublesome in socialist economies as well as Free to Choose. Finally another classic, The Fatal Conceit by F. A. Hayek considers the practicality of socialism from an economic position in a more focused way. Like the previously mentioned books, it is an easy read. These books may not reflect cutting edge thought, having been written in the 70's and 80's, but they were a useful starting point for me when I started to think about these issues more deeply and they are considered seminal works that in my opinion shouldn't be skipped while studying the questions of political and economic theory. A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell further reflects on this question and makes some conclusions about why smart people end up disagreeing in such fundamental ways. I find Sowell's thinking and writing to be clear and well expressed. Finally, an interesting book addresses the puzzling and related question of why does the academic community so easily accommodate views so antithetical to a scientific world view. I believe that this at the heart of the questions raised by the original NYT piece. The book is Higher Superstition by Gross and Levitt. While interesting this book is erudite and seems directed to narrower audience than those mentioned above, expecting a well-read reader. [1] Rawls, A theory of justice. http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/0674000781/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464954851&sr=1-1&keywords=a+theory+of+justice http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/067400078... [2] Nozick, Anarchy, state and utopia. http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/0465051006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464954914&sr=1-1&keywords=anarchy+state+and+utopia+robert+nozick http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/... [3] Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to choose: a personal statement. http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/dp/0156334607/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464954944&sr=1-1&keywords=free+to+choose+milton+friedman http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/... [4] Hayek and Bartley, The fatal conceit: the errors of socialism. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=fatal+conceit&sprefix=fatal+con%2Cstripbooks%2C171 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9?url=search-alias%... [5] Gross and Levitt, Higher superstition: the academic left and its quarrels with science. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+academic+lefts+attack+on+science&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Athe+academic+lefts+attack+on+science http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dst...
- panglott 10y ago
  John Rawls is of course the right answer here, but it seems odd that you cite Hayek, Nozick, Sowell, &c., who are all diametrically opposed. The other one I'd recommend is John Stuart Mill.
  - internaut 10y ago
    I am not joking when I say I don't know a single liberal who has read Rawls or Mill. In fact it is curious how little 'well educated' people read. They appear to absorb their opinions from Thomas Friedman and George Monbiot as if by osmosis. That is not to say there don't exist conservatives or libertarians who also do not read books. Certainly I know religious conservatives who read very little outside of the Bible. I just also know a lot of college educated people whose houses are as bare as caves when it comes to books and most of them are liberal. They spend most of their time working long hours or frenetically socializing, not book friendly activities. My guess is that few of any political conviction go to the source.
lake99 10y ago
Your post confuses me, no offense intended. Friedman and Hayek called themselves liberals, not conservatives. The American progressive movement co-opted the word "liberalism". Before that, they called themselves "progressives". Is that what you're looking for? Todd8's comment below confuses me for the same reason. Rawls could be considered to be on the US-left. The other people he mentioned, except Gross and Levitt, all opposed Rawls, and called themselves "liberals".
- mindcrime 10y ago
  Your post confuses me, no offense intended. Hopefully vowelless won't take offense, because that's probably just a side-effect of how overloaded (and thus meaningless) words like "liberal" and "conservative" and "right" and "left" are in modern American politics. Modern "liberals" are more properly "progressives" (or something), the actual liberals are mostly people who call themselves "libertarian" and "conservatives" are split between the uneducated redneck snake handling fundamentalist types, and the more educated, "fiscally conservative, small government" types. And I'm sure somebody will shoot all sorts of holes in what I just said, which just furthers my point. It's hard to talk about any of this stuff, because we don't have a consistent lingo.
  - vowelless 10y ago
    Thank you. You are absolutely right. I conflated conservatism with libertarianism and liberalism with progressivism.
  - wahern 10y ago
    The vast majority of Americans lean "fiscally conservative, small government". When Bernie Sanders won his mayoral election many years ago, the town council thought he was going to institute a Marxist-Leninist state. They were shocked when he streamlined budgets. (I'm not a Bernie supporter; it's just an anecdote I recently heard on the radio.) Many consider San Francisco to be one of the most "liberal", "progressive" cities in the United States. But during the California fiscal crisis recently, at the depths of the national recession, San Francisco was the only major city in the state (IIRC) that kept a balanced budget the whole time. They did that by relying on savings (the city keeps billions stashed away for emergencies), and by rapidly instituting furloughs and budget cuts. This wasn't by fiat--all components of government, as well as the special interests, were on board. LA and other major cities couldn't accomplish that. And that's ignoring the rest of the country. Similarly, when Democrats obtained a super-majority in California, capable of overriding Republican tax and budget filibustering, they didn't open the flood gates of taxes and spending. The only politicians in recent memory who flat-out stated that they didn't care about fiscal conservatism was Dick Cheney and a substantial minority of similarly-minded politicians and pundits, almost all dedicated Republicans. To quote Dick Cheney, "deficits don't matter". Ignoring social issues, the divide in America isn't about fiscal conservatism and small government versus a gargantuan state. The conflict is over emphasis (social services vs military and police), and small percentage point changes in the taxation rate.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
I think there's a terminological confusion here. "Liberal" in its American, Hillary-Clinton-esque sense is of course going to be favored by highly-educated professionals: it's designed for us. It's our class ideology. If you like immigration because it brings in competitive STEM workers and only eliminates jobs Americans don't want to do, it might be because you view yourself as educationally and professionally advantaged enough to afford to suppress wages for everyone else. If you like the idea of piecemeal reform packages crafted by lobbyists and haggling (like Obamacare), it might be because you've been trained to think of committees of experts as the best way of accomplishing, well, anything. If you want to tax smokestack industries out of existence because blue-collar workers can just learn to code, it might be because you've spent so much time among people with postgraduate degrees that you've come to think of yourself as normal rather than as belonging to an identifiable class. And so on and so forth.
capitalsigma 10y ago
I think it may be tough to find texts that self-identify as "progressive" because -- in my experience as a philosophy major at a good school -- most academic literature takes it for granted that you see value in progressive positions.

sandworm101 10y ago

I think the point is that there are no defined left-wing foundational texts, that it arises with education across disciplines. Liberalism is a product of a variety of educations, not the creation of any one person or group. Read scientific studies on animal migration patterns. Then hit basic astronomy. Then particle physics. Then every episode of the Simpsons.

todd8 10y ago

A classic text on the philosophical underpinnings of (US) liberalism with regard to economic redistribution policies is A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, a renowned professor of philosophy at Harvard. After reading Rawls, I'd suggest maybe reading Robert Nozick's libertarian leaning Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick was another distinguished philosopher from Harvard writing about the same time as Rawls. Nozick comes to a completely different conclusion than Rawls. Both books are good and completely accessible to an ordinary reader (i.e. philosophy degree not required). However, they are serious and not as entertaining as the Friedmans' Free to Choose. While the two philosophy books address the question of what should a fair society look like from a philosophical perspective, I feel they don't address the aspects of human nature that have proven troublesome in socialist economies as well as Free to Choose. Finally another classic, The Fatal Conceit by F. A. Hayek considers the practicality of socialism from an economic position in a more focused way. Like the previously mentioned books, it is an easy read. These books may not reflect cutting edge thought, having been written in the 70's and 80's, but they were a useful starting point for me when I started to think about these issues more deeply and they are considered seminal works that in my opinion shouldn't be skipped while studying the questions of political and economic theory. A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell further reflects on this question and makes some conclusions about why smart people end up disagreeing in such fundamental ways. I find Sowell's thinking and writing to be clear and well expressed. Finally, an interesting book addresses the puzzling and related question of why does the academic community so easily accommodate views so antithetical to a scientific world view. I believe that this at the heart of the questions raised by the original NYT piece. The book is Higher Superstition by Gross and Levitt. While interesting this book is erudite and seems directed to narrower audience than those mentioned above, expecting a well-read reader. [1] Rawls, A theory of justice. http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/0674000781/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464954851&sr=1-1&keywords=a+theory+of+justice http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/067400078... [2] Nozick, Anarchy, state and utopia. http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/0465051006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464954914&sr=1-1&keywords=anarchy+state+and+utopia+robert+nozick http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/... [3] Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to choose: a personal statement. http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/dp/0156334607/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464954944&sr=1-1&keywords=free+to+choose+milton+friedman http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/... [4] Hayek and Bartley, The fatal conceit: the errors of socialism. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=fatal+conceit&sprefix=fatal+con%2Cstripbooks%2C171 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9?url=search-alias%... [5] Gross and Levitt, Higher superstition: the academic left and its quarrels with science. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+academic+lefts+attack+on+science&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Athe+academic+lefts+attack+on+science http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dst...

panglott 10y ago
John Rawls is of course the right answer here, but it seems odd that you cite Hayek, Nozick, Sowell, &c., who are all diametrically opposed. The other one I'd recommend is John Stuart Mill.
- internaut 10y ago
  I am not joking when I say I don't know a single liberal who has read Rawls or Mill. In fact it is curious how little 'well educated' people read. They appear to absorb their opinions from Thomas Friedman and George Monbiot as if by osmosis. That is not to say there don't exist conservatives or libertarians who also do not read books. Certainly I know religious conservatives who read very little outside of the Bible. I just also know a lot of college educated people whose houses are as bare as caves when it comes to books and most of them are liberal. They spend most of their time working long hours or frenetically socializing, not book friendly activities. My guess is that few of any political conviction go to the source.

lake99 10y ago

Your post confuses me, no offense intended. Friedman and Hayek called themselves liberals, not conservatives. The American progressive movement co-opted the word "liberalism". Before that, they called themselves "progressives". Is that what you're looking for? Todd8's comment below confuses me for the same reason. Rawls could be considered to be on the US-left. The other people he mentioned, except Gross and Levitt, all opposed Rawls, and called themselves "liberals".

mindcrime 10y ago
Your post confuses me, no offense intended. Hopefully vowelless won't take offense, because that's probably just a side-effect of how overloaded (and thus meaningless) words like "liberal" and "conservative" and "right" and "left" are in modern American politics. Modern "liberals" are more properly "progressives" (or something), the actual liberals are mostly people who call themselves "libertarian" and "conservatives" are split between the uneducated redneck snake handling fundamentalist types, and the more educated, "fiscally conservative, small government" types. And I'm sure somebody will shoot all sorts of holes in what I just said, which just furthers my point. It's hard to talk about any of this stuff, because we don't have a consistent lingo.
- vowelless 10y ago
  Thank you. You are absolutely right. I conflated conservatism with libertarianism and liberalism with progressivism.
- wahern 10y ago
  The vast majority of Americans lean "fiscally conservative, small government". When Bernie Sanders won his mayoral election many years ago, the town council thought he was going to institute a Marxist-Leninist state. They were shocked when he streamlined budgets. (I'm not a Bernie supporter; it's just an anecdote I recently heard on the radio.) Many consider San Francisco to be one of the most "liberal", "progressive" cities in the United States. But during the California fiscal crisis recently, at the depths of the national recession, San Francisco was the only major city in the state (IIRC) that kept a balanced budget the whole time. They did that by relying on savings (the city keeps billions stashed away for emergencies), and by rapidly instituting furloughs and budget cuts. This wasn't by fiat--all components of government, as well as the special interests, were on board. LA and other major cities couldn't accomplish that. And that's ignoring the rest of the country. Similarly, when Democrats obtained a super-majority in California, capable of overriding Republican tax and budget filibustering, they didn't open the flood gates of taxes and spending. The only politicians in recent memory who flat-out stated that they didn't care about fiscal conservatism was Dick Cheney and a substantial minority of similarly-minded politicians and pundits, almost all dedicated Republicans. To quote Dick Cheney, "deficits don't matter". Ignoring social issues, the divide in America isn't about fiscal conservatism and small government versus a gargantuan state. The conflict is over emphasis (social services vs military and police), and small percentage point changes in the taxation rate.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

I think there's a terminological confusion here. "Liberal" in its American, Hillary-Clinton-esque sense is of course going to be favored by highly-educated professionals: it's designed for us. It's our class ideology. If you like immigration because it brings in competitive STEM workers and only eliminates jobs Americans don't want to do, it might be because you view yourself as educationally and professionally advantaged enough to afford to suppress wages for everyone else. If you like the idea of piecemeal reform packages crafted by lobbyists and haggling (like Obamacare), it might be because you've been trained to think of committees of experts as the best way of accomplishing, well, anything. If you want to tax smokestack industries out of existence because blue-collar workers can just learn to code, it might be because you've spent so much time among people with postgraduate degrees that you've come to think of yourself as normal rather than as belonging to an identifiable class. And so on and so forth.

capitalsigma 10y ago

I think it may be tough to find texts that self-identify as "progressive" because -- in my experience as a philosophy major at a good school -- most academic literature takes it for granted that you see value in progressive positions.