La historia olvidada del liberalismo : Desde la antigua Roma hasta el siglo XXI

The forgotten history of liberalism challenges our most basic assumptions about a political creed that has become both a rallying cry and a derogatory term in political debate. Helena Rosenblatt traces the evolution of the words "liberal" and "liberalism" from ancient Rome to the present day, reviewing the heated debates that have taken place over their meaning. In this timely and provocative book, Rosenblatt debunks the popular myth of liberalism as an exclusively Anglo-American tradition centered on individual rights. She tells us that it was the French Revolution that gave birth to liberalism, and that only in the mid-twentieth century did the concept become widely known in the United States. It was during the Cold War and the growing global hegemony of the United States that liberalism was reshaped into an American ideology heavily focused on individual liberties. Today, we still don't seem to agree on the meaning of liberalism. In the United States, a liberal is someone who advocates for big government, while in other parts of the world big government is seen as contrary to liberalism; political debates are complicated by this semantic and conceptual confusion. The forgotten history of liberalism lays the groundwork for a more constructive discussion about the future of liberal democracy.