I was at the Liberalism for the 21st Century conference last week in DC where I bumped into an old friend and KEEN ON regular Jonathan Rauch. A Brookings Fellow and prolific author, Rauch is amongst America’s most thoughtful commentators on the contemporary crisis of liberalism and the rising popularity of “post-liberalism”. So, in the wake of Trump’s choice of JD Vance, a politician who has openly embraced the “post-liberal” moniker, I caught up with Rauch to get his take on a liberalism for the 21st century. Does John Stuart Mill’s classic 19th century theory of individual rights need to be reinvented for our networked age, I asked. And does the West need a revitalized international liberal consensus to confront not just China, but rogue states like Iran, North Korea and Russia.
JONATHAN RAUCH, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, is the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book, published in 2021 by the Brookings Press, is The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, a spirited and deep-diving account of how to push back against disinformation, canceling, and other new threats to our fact-based epistemic order. In 2018, he published The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50, a lauded account of the surprising relationship between aging and happiness. Other books include Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul, a memoir of his struggle with his sexuality, and Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, published in 2004 by Times Books (Henry Holt). His most recent ebook is Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy (Brookings, 2015). Although much of his writing has been on public policy, he has also written on topics as widely varied as adultery, agriculture, economics, gay marriage, height discrimination, biological rhythms, number inflation, and animal rights. His multiple-award-winning column, “Social Studies,” appeared from 1998 to 2010 in National Journal. Among the many other publications for which he has written are The New Republic, The Economist, Reason, Harper’s, Fortune, Reader’s Digest, Time, The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, Slate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Public Interest, National Affairs, The Advocate, The Daily, and others. In his 1994 book Demosclerosis—revised and republished in 2000 as Government’s End: Why Washington Stopped Working—he argues that America’s government is becoming gradually less flexible and effective with time, and suggests ways to treat the malady. His 1993 book Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought (published by the University of Chicago Press; expanded in 2013) defends free speech and robust criticism, even when it is racist or sexist and even when it hurts. In 1992 his book The Outnation: A Search for the Soul of Japan questioned the then-conventional wisdom that Japan was fundamentally different from the West. In 1996, with Robert Litan, he also co-authored a report for the U.S. Treasury Department on the future of the financial-services industry (American Finance for the 21st Century). In 1995 he spent a year as a visiting writer for The Economist magazine in London, and in 1997 he returned as guest editor of the Christmas special issue. Rauch was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and graduated in 1982 from Ya
I was at the Liberalism for the 21st Century conference last week in DC where I bumped into an old friend and KEEN ON regular Jonathan Rauch. A Brookings Fellow and prolific author, Rauch is amongst America’s most thoughtful commentators on the contemporary crisis of liberalism and the rising popularity of “post-liberalism”. So, in the wake of Trump’s choice of JD Vance, a politician who has openly embraced the “post-liberal” moniker, I caught up with Rauch to get his take on a liberalism for the 21st century. Does John Stuart Mill’s classic 19th century theory of individual rights need to be reinvented for our networked age, I asked. And does the West need a revitalized international liberal consensus to confront not just China, but rogue states like Iran, North Korea and Russia.
JONATHAN RAUCH, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, is the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book, published in 2021 by the Brookings Press, is The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, a spirited and deep-diving account of how to push back against disinformation, canceling, and other new threats to our fact-based epistemic order. In 2018, he published The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50, a lauded account of the surprising relationship between aging and happiness. Other books include Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul, a memoir of his struggle with his sexuality, and Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, published in 2004 by Times Books (Henry Holt). His most recent ebook is Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy (Brookings, 2015). Although much of his writing has been on public policy, he has also written on topics as widely varied as adultery, agriculture, economics, gay marriage, height discrimination, biological rhythms, number inflation, and animal rights. His multiple-award-winning column, “Social Studies,” appeared from 1998 to 2010 in National Journal. Among the many other publications for which he has written are The New Republic, The Economist, Reason, Harper’s, Fortune, Reader’s Digest, Time, The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, Slate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Public Interest, National Affairs, The Advocate, The Daily, and others. In his 1994 book Demosclerosis—revised and republished in 2000 as Government’s End: Why Washington Stopped Working—he argues that America’s government is becoming gradually less flexible and effective with time, and suggests ways to treat the malady. His 1993 book Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought (published by the University of Chicago Press; expanded in 2013) defends free speech and robust criticism, even when it is racist or sexist and even when it hurts. In 1992 his book The Outnation: A Search for the Soul of Japan questioned the then-conventional wisdom that Japan was fundamentally different from the West. In 1996, with Robert Litan, he also co-authored a report for the U.S. Treasury Department on the future of the financial-services industry (American Finance for the 21st Century). In 1995 he spent a year as a visiting writer for The Economist magazine in London, and in 1997 he returned as guest editor of the Christmas special issue. Rauch was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and graduated in 1982 from Ya
