092: Liberalism's Common Ground (w/ Matt Zwolinski and Matthew McManus)

About this episode

The episode discusses the future of liberalism and the importance of building coalitions among liberals with differing views.

The future of liberalism depends upon the coalitions liberals can build, both to defend institutions now and to reform them when the time comes. As my friend, and past ReImagining Liberty guest , Jason Kuznicki says, "The future is a conversation." So today I've brought on two smart liberals, with very different ideas about what liberalism means in practice, for a conversation about common ground. Matthew McManus is an assistant professor at Spelman College, author of The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism , and frequent ReImagining Liberty guest. Matt Zwolinski is a first time ReImagining Liberty guest, an omission I'm thrilled to rectify. He's a professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego, co-author of The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism , and founder of the seminal—but now sadly defunct—blog Bleeding Heart Libertarians . This episode is prompted by a review Zwolinski wrote of McManus's book , a review that noted their shared values and dug into why, in each of their cases, those values led them to quite distinct policy conclusions. And that's our topic for today. It's a conversation about agreement…

People in this episode

Host: Aaron Ross Powell

Guests: Matt Zwolinski, Matthew McManus

Topics covered

• liberalism
• political theory
• coalitions
• productive conversations
• agreement and disagreement

Keywords

• liberalism
• political theory
• coalitions
• Matt Zwolinski
• Matthew McManus
• productive conversations
• agreement
• disagreement

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Spelman College, University of San Diego

Books & works: The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism, The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism, Bleeding Heart Libertarians

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