Abstract

Danielle Allen

The article focuses on the Democratic Party in the United States, following its defeat in the 2004 elections. Freedom is on the march, said President George W. Bush in the presidential debates. For the past forty years, rightward-leaning political thinkers have been developing rigorous accounts of the human and economic value of political liberty and arguments about how to secure and protect that liberty. Coherent theories of liberty developed by the likes of Milton Friedman's and Leo Strauss's fellow travelers gained precision and force for being targeted responses to Soviet totalitarianism and communism. But what about the Patriot Act? How can that be reconciled with a description of the Republicans as the party of liberty? Democracy depends on both liberty and equality. Liberals and progressives need to get back to the hard work that precedes policies and slogans: thought-work. We need a thorough, theoretical defense of the foundational status of equality in democratic life.