Alan Wolfe maintains, in The Future of Liberalism, that Hurricane Katrina has exposed the antistatism advocated by conservatives (and, need I add, libertarians) is a dysfunctional dogma. It tested the thesis, one of antistatism's central tenets, that private charities and small scale local action are best suited to delivering relief and supporting communities.
The disaster of conservatism's disaster response should be "viewed as a decisive event in the history of political philosophy," he writes. After Katrina, the relevant question is no longer whether or not we need strong government institutions, but how to best and most effectively utilize their power wisely.
In contratast to this dysfunctioanl dogma, Liberalism rejects ideology and may be thought of as "a set of dispositions" which include a strong preference for liberty and equality, and a realism that relies on rational deliberation and actual governance. By denying the reality of its abject failure, by clinging to dogma and ideology, conservatives have consigned themselves to long-term irrelevance, the proverbial dust-bin of history. The future belongs to liberalism.
Sayonara conservatism. Hasta la vista, baby.
From a review by Theo Anderson of Alan Wolfe's The Future of Liberalism, Knopf, 325 pp, $25.95. Review published in The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2009, p 110
View The Future of Libralism on Amazon.com
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