{"id":8241,"date":"2026-10-02T07:26:38","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T05:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/?p=8241"},"modified":"2026-10-02T07:26:38","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T05:26:38","slug":"a-liberal-manifesto-for-not-dying-of-doom-mongering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/a-liberal-manifesto-for-not-dying-of-doom-mongering\/","title":{"rendered":"A liberal manifesto for not dying of doom-mongering"},"content":{"rendered":"
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French-Swiss author and politician Henri Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (1767-1830) critical of Napoleon but later became one of his counselors during the hundred days in 1814, circa 1815. (Photo by Kean Collection\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Because they dislike tribalism, many liberals don’t like explaining why they are liberals, unlike illiberals, post-liberals and anti-liberals. For liberals, writing about it can even become a chore,” writes Cass R. Sunstein in his latest book, “On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom”, just out in Italy from Silvio Berlusconi Editore with the title “Esperimenti di vita. In difesa del liberalismo“<\/em>. Sunstein worked in the Obama administration and teaches at Harvard. With this book he offers a manifesto on what it means to be a liberal today. He reminds us that liberalism is “a big tent,” one that holds together thinkers as different as Kant and Isaiah Berlin and, unlike other political cultures, allows for a lively and ongoing debate.<\/p>\n

Today, however, both the far left and the far right use the word “liberal” as an insult. According to Professor Sunstein, this stems from a great confusion, which he sets out to clear up in the book. “A confusion that breeds even more confusion,” he tells Il Foglio<\/em>. “We need to know what we’re talking about, about that liberalism is.” Indeed, the book contains a long list. For example, ” If you like freedom, you should be inclined to like liberalism. But some of the right thinks of “liberalism” as “globalist,” or pro-immigration, or anti-nationalist, or woke. And some of left thinks of “liberalism” as neoliberalism – as overexcited about free markets, as against a social safety net, as against environmental protection.” Sunstein explains. But liberalism means above all “a commitment to freedom (especially freedom of speech and freedom of religion), the rule of law, and respect for pluralism. That’s liberalism’s Holy Trinity! \u00a0Young people should like it. Olivia Rodrigo, the world’s best young musician, certainly likes freedom and pluralism (and I bet she likes the rule of law, too). Listen to her All-American Bitch.'” At one point Rodrigo sings that she is an eternal optimist, which is another key element of being a liberal: optimism.<\/p>\n

It isn’t always easy to be optimistic when extremist parties are winning in places like Germany and the Netherlands. “There are warning signs,” the professor says, because ” while Europe has steady foundations, liberalism seems, to too many, to be tired and old. That’s definitely a problem. Liberalism is in our hands, and we aren’t tired, and all of us can be young (at heart).” One wonders, though, how liberalism can survive in a country whose leader seems far from that Holy Trinity of values, as with Donald Trump throwing journalists out of the White House. ” If a nation doesn’t have a liberal leader, it will go in antiliberal directions, even if the population is mostly liberal. Ask Germany about that. The good news is that if the public is liberal, there’s a chance that freedom will eventually roar. More good news is that most leaders are constrained\u201d.Those limits come from constitutions or the courts, which, Sunstein says, can do a great deal for freedom of expression.<\/p>\n

Sunstein tells us he loves France as the “birthplaces of liberalism” (think of Benjamin Constant), a country “whose culture is, in important ways, deeply liberal.” It is also one of the countries under the spotlight because of next year’s presidential elections, where one possible scenario is a showdown between Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon, an “Islamo-leftist” (a Hamas sympathizer), and Marine Le Pen, a nationalist (and Putin supporter). But here too the professor is optimistic. ” I have high hopes for France. It\u00a0 has too much energy and joy, and too strong a sense of defiance, to cast liberalism aside\u201d.<\/p>\n

One issue in the United States is bringing the extremes together: artificial intelligence. Consider the odd partnership between the white supremacist Steve Bannon and the socialist Bernie Sanders, who both say the apocalypse is coming. What should be done about AI? Is it illiberal to control it? ” I am in favor of a new regulatory agency, the AI Regulatory Commission. It should have reporting and investigatory duties. It should also have rulemaking authority. It should be required to consider costs and benefits, and it should be authorized to reduce catastrophic risks. It should be directed to coordinate with regulators in other nations, starting with Italy”.<\/p>\n

If liberalism isn’t attractive, we’ve gathered, it is because it isn’t explained and because there is confusion. But there must also be reasons why many people are willing to give up freedom for more security, to trade the rule of law for speedy executive action from above, or to be skeptical of democracy and the free market. According to Sunstein, one reason is ” ambient rage,” because ” rage is a real problem for liberalism. One source of the rage is economic. People are really struggling”. Then there is another, “more emotional. People feel humiliated, and not respected. As they say, “hurt people hurt,” meaning, those who are hurt, personally, often hurt others.”<\/p>\n

In this latest book, the Harvard professor writes something that sounds light but matters more than it seems: “Liberals like to laugh. They are anti-anti-fun.” That alone should be enough to become one. Sunstein is married to Ambassador Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former US ambassador to the UN, whom he met while they were both working on Barack Obama’s campaign. When we ask whether there can be something romantic about politics, he replies: “Absolutely! Haven’t you seen Casablanca<\/em>? Politics is a form of romance, and vice-versa.”<\/p>\n

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“Because they dislike tribalism, many liberals don’t like explaining why they are liberals, unlike illiberals, post-liberals and anti-liberals. For liberals, writing about it can even become a chore,” writes Cass R. Sunstein in his latest book, “On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom”, just out in Italy from Silvio Berlusconi Editore with the title “Esperimenti di […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8307,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8241"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8318,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8241\/revisions\/8318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}