apsies

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote of “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” And Abraham Lincoln said of this founding document that it “gave liberty not alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world, for all future time.” Liberal ideas, in other words, have informed American politics from Jefferson to Lincoln, and we are no less in need of the vitality and redeeming strength of the liberal spirit today. Liberalism is not dead, though it does seem at times to be besieged and bewildered. Indeed, I fully expect liberalism to be stronger and more successful over the next twenty-five years than it has been in the past twenty-five—provided that liberals learn to shed a little of their timidity.