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The
Faith of a Liberal
by Morris Raphael Cohen
Liberalism is too often misconceived as a new
set of dogmas taught by a newer and better set of
priests called "liberals." Liberalism is an
attitude rather than a set of dogmas -- an attitude
that insists upon questioning all plausible and
self-evident propositions, seeking not to reject
them but to find out what evidence there is to
support them rather than their possible
alternatives. This open eye for possible
alternatives which need to be scrutinized before we
can determine which is the best grounded is
profoundly disconcerting to all conservatives and
to almost all revolutionaries. Conservatism clings
to what has been established, fearing that, once we
begin to question the beliefs that we have
inherited, all the values of life will be
destroyed. The revolutionary, impressed with the
evil of the existing order or disorder, is prone to
put his faith in some mighty-sounding principle
without regard for the complications, compromises,
dangers, and hardships that will be involved in the
adjustment of this principle to other worthy
principles. Revolutionaries and reactionaries alike
are irritated and perhaps inwardly humiliated by
the humane temper of liberalism, which reveals by
contract the common inhumanity of both violent
parties to the social struggle. Liberalism, on the
other hand, regards life as an adventure in which
we must take risks in new situation, in which there
is no guarantee that the new will always be the
good or the true, in which progress is a precarious
achievement rather than inevitability.
Excerpted from The Faith of a
Liberal, by Morris Raphael Cohen
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A
Dreamer's Journey: The Autobiography of Morris
Raphael Cohen
The
Faith of a Liberal, by Morris Raphael
Cohen
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