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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 16h

"Even in the darkest days of the dictatorship, Chileans saw themselves as citizens of a republic." www.liberalcurrents.com/how-chile-re...

How Chile Recovered Its Democracy

A leader operating beyond the margins of the law can yet eventually be defeated in a free and fair election.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 29/09/2026

"Let us look at wealth taxes both past and present so we might learn what makes them tick—and why so few places have kept them around." www.liberalcurrents.com/tax-the-weal...

Tax the Wealthy, Not Wealth

Don’t miss the forest for the tallest trees.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 28/09/2026

"The evidence continues to grow. Social media, as it is currently constructed, redounds to the net benefit of illiberal regimes and their allies in democracies. The question is what to do about it." www.liberalcurrents.com/social-media...

Social Media Has Not Brought Liberation

Social media has been a boon to autocratic regimes and their allied movements in democracies.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 25/09/2026

"Chayefsky had a lot to say about television, and he said it with an unflattering, searing bite—and it’s all the more relevant in an age when we each carry a television studio in our pockets and all dream of becoming a hit." www.liberalcurrents.com/network-at-5...

“Network” at 50: Now We’re All Mad as Hell

Paddy Chayefsky’s take on television captured the Long 1970s—and anticipated the rise of social media.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 24/09/2026

Can a candidate for office try hard to triangulate their position on issues that voters don't care much about and thereby catapult themselves to a big election win? We'll talk about it on Liberal Currents Live today. 1 p.m. on Mackinac Island, 12 noon in Fort Worth, 10 a.m. in Tracy

James Talarico Press Conference, CC BY-SA 4.0 Antonio Esparza 2025. Abdul El-Sayed Meets Voters, CC BY-SA 4.0 Conlan Houston 2025.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 24/09/2026

"What astonishes me in the public treatment of Hanania is how little attention is paid to his inveterate male supremacism. On this front, he has not attempted even a quick costume change. Instead, Hanania is quite simply a rape apologist." www.liberalcurrents.com/richard-hana...

Richard Hanania Doesn't Even Try to Hide His Male Supremacism

Hanania is a reminder of the dangers of rehabilitating extremist intellectuals.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 23/09/2026

"There are many other Enlightenment and classical philosophers who were deeply influential to the founding of the United States, from Aristotle and Cicero to John Locke and Montesquieu. Yet only Smith receives this canonical status." www.liberalcurrents.com/jefferson-ma...

Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Smith: The College Board Adds a New Founding Father

On the politics of canonization in academia.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 22/09/2026

"Mr. Trump’s unique brand of political Teflon seems to be rooted in the unrelenting, myriad nature of his various scandals. It is impossible to focus too much on any relatively modest outrage, and increasingly, even the major ones slip by." www.liberalcurrents.com/on-the-pract...

On the Practical Case for a Book of Grudges

While headlines chronicle the unending misdeeds of this sordid decade, a comprehensive list is needed.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 21/09/2026

Poll participants were asked both who they would vote for if the Democratic presidential primary were held today and who they would vote for if their first-choice candidate was not running. www.liberalcurrents.com/what-are-dem...

Presidential Primary Poll Results
Poll participants were asked both who they would vote for if the Democratic presidential primary were held today and who they would vote for if their first-choice candidate was not running.
Kamala Harris 25%+8%
Gavin Newsom 15%+15%
Pete Buttigieg 13%+12%
Jon Ossoff 10%+11%
Mark Kelly 9%+13%
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 8%+10%
Josh Shapiro 6%+10%
J. B. Pritzker 4%+8%
Andy Beshear 3%+5%
Ro Khanna 1%+2%
Shawn Fain 1%+1%
Other 6%+5%

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 21/09/2026

"On September 9, Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico went on Fox News and publicly walked back his support for trans rights. He hedged—moderated—waffled—caved—folded." www.liberalcurrents.com/talarico-d-i...

Talarico (D) Is Just a Letter to Me Now

After folding on trans rights, James Talarico does not have my respect. Honestly, fuck him. And yet, Ken Paxton (R) must lose.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 18/09/2026

"Human beings may overcome the economic problem(s) of the human species, but the question of meaning and existential satisfaction will remain 'the permanent problem of the human race.'" www.liberalcurrents.com/you-should-r...

You Should Read Keynes

Keynes was a liberal for our age: morally serious, hopeful for a better future, and yet reconciled to the compromises necessary to preserve the fragile liberal order.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 17/09/2026

"The rank bigotry and misogyny of Herrera and French are an exact portrait of the contemporary Texas GOP. The Texas Republicans are institutionally rotten, and that can be seen at the highest levels of politics." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-future-o...

The Future of the Republican Party After Trump Is in Texas

The white male supremacists of the Texas GOP embody what the national party has become.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 16/09/2026

"Nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence never really left international politics, but they are now returning from the democracies’ mental margins." www.liberalcurrents.com/nuclear-arms...

Nuclear Arms and the New Free World

The free world no longer has the luxury of regarding nuclear deterrence like a snow globe on a shelf.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 15/09/2026

"For the last 11 years and counting America has seen one of its two major political parties, its federal government, and much of the rest of society infested by a very large and very rotten spray-tanned apple." www.liberalcurrents.com/americas-mor...

America’s Moral Rot in the Age of Trumpism and How to Reverse It

Accountability and court reform must be zealously pursued once Trump is out of power.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 14/09/2026

"Our illiberal enemies have made it very clear that they don’t want to ignore the arts: they want to weaponize them… But we have a historical model for how to respond to this, one that we can both draw on and improve upon." www.liberalcurrents.com/we-need-a-ne...

We Need a New Federal Writers Project

Drawing on and improving the model pioneered during the New Deal.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 11/09/2026

"If Trump is taking America down, if he is going to bury this country, all the good in it and all its prosperity and potential, then he wants his most adoring and loyal retainers with him. He wants his cult locked inside." www.liberalcurrents.com/donald-trump...

Donald Trump Wants to Bury America With Him

His speech at the GOP's midterm convention came off like a Jim Jones sermon.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 10/09/2026

"How do we break out of the contemporary logjam, create genuine positive change, and arrive at a new equilibrium, less prone to capsizing? One answer, much longed for by every faction of the commentariat, is the mass party." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-mass-par...

The Mass Party of the Future

Liberalism's problem isn't structural. Liberalism's problem is that we got out-hustled.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 09/09/2026

"We are more connected, more informed, more agitated than ever; we can manifest across the globe in flash mobs for any cause you care to name. And yet the relations of ruling remain unchanged. We’re depressed. Despondent. Posting alone. What gives?" www.liberalcurrents.com/the-end-of-h...

The End of History and the Final Girl

Anton Jäger’s "Hyperpolitics" is, at its best, late marginalia for "The End of History and the Last Man." At its worst, Jäger, like Fukuyama, is a prisoner of his political pieties.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 08/09/2026

"Actual revolution, far right or far left, has not come. But too many Americans seem to think we are immune to such a fate or, worse, that they would find themselves to be the beneficiaries." www.liberalcurrents.com/you-wont-win...

You Won’t Win the Revolution

The descent of stable societies into ones of endemic violence rarely produces anything but new forms of tyranny and terror.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 07/09/2026

"From sea to shining, you’ll find us gathering in our small hundreds and thousands—the true, blue Democratic Party. People have big feelings about the Democrats, but too often those feelings are more like suspicions and too seldom grounded in facts." www.liberalcurrents.com/meet-the-dem...

Meet the Democrats

The party is not an abstract cabal powered by fever dreams, but a living, breathing coalition held together by a ceaseless grind and people with the will to face it.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 04/09/2026

"The struggle between Shaheen, Sullivan, and Beriont to appeal to the Democratic base reflects the ongoing turmoil roiling the Democratic Party as they attempt to respond to Trump 2.0." www.liberalcurrents.com/a-progressiv...

A Progressive Push in Purple New Hampshire

Congressional hopeful Carleigh Beriont says left-leaning politics can succeed in the Granite State.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 03/09/2026

"The closure of the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech is one within a nationwide pattern, with Humanities programs, especially in Religious Studies, being particularly susceptible to these administrative maneuvers." www.liberalcurrents.com/religion-hum...

Religion, Humanities, and the Public Good

The right wing's assault on Religion and Humanities programs is an assault on our ability to understand the world, from Hindutva abroad to Christian Nationalism at home.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 02/09/2026

"The period between 1989 and 2003 is rightly remembered today as the high point of American global supremacy: a time of euphoria, high hopes, and unquestioned political legitimacy. "America’s standing and prestige has since then cratered to an all-time low." www.liberalcurrents.com/after-1989/

After 1989

The current crisis of democracy was not inevitable, but a result of hubris and shortsightedness among generations of statesmen.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 01/09/2026

"I know little to nothing about Maurie McInnis’ politics, but if I had to guess, there is probably minimal overlap between her ideological point of view and that of Meatball Ron. And yet what links them both is McInnis’ willingness to capitulate to Trump." www.liberalcurrents.com/bending-the-...

Bending the Knee at Yale

Why is it that Maurie McInnis and her fellow elites crumbled so instantaneously?

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 31/08/2026

"In the face of reactionary pressure and anti-democratic assaults on not just the gains of Woke 1.0 but all the gains of the Civil Rights era, it is clear that new, more vigorous institutions are needed in response." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-world-th...

The World That Woke 2.0 Seeks to Build

We can learn from the Civil Rights Movement, but we can also learn from its opposition.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 28/08/2026

"Elites were a bit more clear-eyed about the nature of tabloids than they appear to be about the nature of social media. … In the last 15 years, elites were active and responsive on Twitter specifically to an extraordinary degree." www.liberalcurrents.com/elites-need-...

Elites Need Some Emotional Distance from Social Media

Twenty-plus years on, it’s time they started adapting to the realities of the era.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 27/08/2026

"'Extremely Online' is one of those terms that oozes 'know it when you see it' ineffability… Not everyone who uses social media, much less the Internet writ large, is Extremely Online, and not all of us who struggle with Onlineness do so in the same way." www.liberalcurrents.com/extremely-on...

Extremely Online 2.0

Becoming Extremely Online is a choice: one that fewer of us should make.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 26/08/2026

"Democrats are favored to win at least one house of Congress in this November’s midterm elections. In that, Democrats are getting help from an unlikely source, who presumably isn’t doing it on purpose: Donald Trump, in particular his foreign policy." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-trump-tr...

The Trump Trainwreck

The president’s choices at home and abroad are boosting Democrats’ chances in November.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 25/08/2026

"She has unique proximity to the enormous power of that office, she is absolutely up to something unhealthy for the republic, and no one has done anything about it for over a year and a half." www.liberalcurrents.com/a-republic-o...

A Republic of Excuses

You will not like it here and it will get worse until we get better.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 24/08/2026

"Liberal institutions have become better at diagnosing mistrust than repairing it. We now have a vocabulary for polarization, disinformation, and democratic decline, yet many institutional responses still resemble a public relations strategy from the 1990s." www.liberalcurrents.com/what-comes-a...

What Comes After Mistrust? Liberalism Needs a Theory of Repair

Liberals need practical approaches to earn trust through visible, messy, and ongoing responsiveness.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 22/08/2026

"She chastises herself for being distracted by her father’s death and offers Trump the place of instructor and teacher, imploring him to dole out praise and punishment as he sees fit. This is not so different from what MAGA desires politically." www.liberalcurrents.com/natalie-harp...

Natalie Harp and the American Don (Juan)

Even as the right cheers Trump dispensing punishment to their enemies, they crave to be disciplined themselves.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 21/08/2026

"The United States has no single national body that runs elections… Nothing in American practice resembles a single nationwide agency conducting a compressed, house-to-house re-verification of an entire state's electorate within a six-month window." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-voter-ro...

The Voter Roll Purge That Helped End Trinamool Rule

Are elections more safely run by one accountable body, or by 10,000 uncoordinated ones?

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 20/08/2026

welcome too @radtranslib.bsky.social @ryangeddie.bsky.social tune in nowww ➡️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACfJ...

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 20/08/2026

"If we are to sustain a healthy democracy, we will have to find ways to draw back from this spiral of resentment and vice, and recover instead a capacity to see others as offering something of value to our public deliberations." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-reasonab...

The Reasonable Liberal

We must begin the process of making our political rivals not just more legible but human in a way we can also recognize in ourselves.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 19/08/2026

"The extent to which it is possible to get back on that neighborly track, given the internal politics in the US and the massive power and wealth disparity between the US and the next-largest economies in the hemisphere, is an open question." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-western-...

The Western Hemisphere After Trump

The aim of neighborly and mutual integration with the Western Hemisphere, including free trade and the free movement of people, is a noble one.

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 18/08/2026

"There are green shoots springing on the American left. … Evelyn Normielib is singing the Internationale, and DSAers who were posting Glowing Eyes Dzerzhinsky memes in mid-2020 are lining up to vote in the primaries… The vibes could be worse." www.liberalcurrents.com/making-a-pop...

No Kings Protest Downtown Miami, by Phillip Pessar

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 16/08/2026

"To understand how the Senate figures into the project of Reconstruction, we first need to fit it into a wider constitutional politics." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-reconstr...

Reconstructing the Senate
Kevin J. Elliott
from The Reconstruction Papers
Liberal Currents
2026

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 15/08/2026

"Holding bad actors accountable for the legal and human-rights violations of migrants is a necessary but insufficient condition for reform. The Department of Homeland Security, especially CBP and ICE, must be defunded and dismantled." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-reconstr...

How to Normalize Immigration: Elements of Liberal Immigration Reforms
Anna Law
from The Reconstruction Papers
Liberal Currents
2026

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 13/08/2026

"The collapse of the ancien regime was so radicalizing an event in world history that it turned subdued intellectuals into vocal liberators. Otherwise timid and prudent thinkers discovered a newfound boldness." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-reconstr...

The Ark and the Deluge: The Unfurling of Equality in World History
Guillaume Attia
from The Reconstruction Papers
Liberal Currents
2026

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 13/08/2026

"They tell us that liberalism is defined by 'forbearance.' Yet forbearance cannot be the definition of liberalism…[it] is another way of saying 'restraint,' but restraint from doing what? What are the ends of liberalism that it must be restrained in pursuing?" www.liberalcurrents.com/the-reconstr...

Remember Who You Are, Liberal
Samantha Hancox-Li
from The Reconstruction Papers
Liberal Currents
2026

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 13/08/2026

Coming up later today on YouTube and Twitch at 6 p.m. in London and Manchester at 1 p.m. in New York and Atlanta at 12 noon in Chicago and Dallas at 10 a.m. in Los Angeles and San Francisco it will be Liberal Currents Live but let's debut that artwork now

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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 12/08/2026

"Trump did not write this filing—can you imagine the current Donald Trump writing a 16-page document of any kind? … No, it was written this way because every official in the administration has sublimated their personality and approach to Trump's." www.liberalcurrents.com/editors-note...

“The National Trust for Historic Preservation” is a beautiful name, but even their name is FAKE because when they add the words “in the United States” to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, it makes it sound like a Governmental Agency, which it is not. In fact, the United States refused to continue funding it in 2005 because they strongly disagreed with their mission and objectives. They are very bad for our Country.

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