Chapter Summaries

Despite recent Democratic victories and the collapse of conservative ideology, liberals must fight to ensure that America does not return to conservatism.
The fortunes of liberalism as a public philosophy declined sharply over the past 40 years because it lacked a coherent moral philosophy.
To sustain a progressive future for America, liberals must develop a comprehensive moral identity.

Economic, social, and foreign policy disasters are moral failures.

Conservatives believe the United States is engaged in an apocalyptic battle against evil that can be won only through military power and moral spine- stiffening.
Despite their stated opposition to big government, conservatives seek to use government power to engineer a human individual that can wage this war against evil.
The aim of conservative policy is to transform individuals into self-reliant paragons of traditional virtue.
This personal morality is the key to understanding conservatism’s attraction to voters, who see it as an antidote to the rapid social changes sweeping American society.

Conservatism’s attempt to reform the souls of American citizens by demanding conformity to traditional values fails because:

It is incompatible with the needs of American capitalism
We are influenced by a variety of conflicting traditions, some of them quite opposed to conservatism, and
Conservative assumptions about how we acquire moral values are false, according to empirical research in psychology.

Individuals cannot be made morally responsible and self-reliant through increased competition, coercion, and exposure to risk.
These failed strategies for developing self-reliance are especially pernicious because they undermine social trust, which is an essential foundation for cultivating moral values.

Conservatives misunderstand the nature of evil.
This mistake is responsible for conservatism’s permanent state of war, excessive vigilance against American citizens, and the erosion of social trust.
America’s decline is the result of this nihilistic, conservative moral doctrine.

The failure of modern conservatism is evident, but the fact that liberalism was unable to prevent its rise to power shows that liberalism is in need of revision.

Liberalism values equality and liberty and emphasizes the role of government in protecting these values.
Many middle class voters are more concerned about cultural decline than protecting equality and liberty, and liberalism does not effectively address their issues.
To meet 21st Century challenges, liberals must satisfy people’s longing for a higher, common purpose, conceptualizing social justice as an integral part of a resurgent culture movement rather than a product of bureaucratic organization or economic structure.

Liberalism has lacked a conception of human flourishing and a sense of common purpose. Instead, it focuses on policies and procedures through which politically powerful institutions and experts regulate public life.
These tendencies in modern liberalism are the result of investing too much moral authority in abstract principles and impartial procedures.
Abstract principles and impartial procedures fail to ameliorate the rampant pursuit of economic self-interest promoted by conservatism. They are complicit in the erosion of the public sphere and undermining of social trust, which has caused our economic crisis.

A network of caring relationships extending far beyond the family is essential to preserving the American Dream.
Our excessive emphasis on economic growth, individual consumption, self-sufficiency, and accountability regimes tend to crowd connectedness and the quality of human relationships from the public agenda.
Attention to the quality of human relationships can function as the goal of our political association and supply the higher purpose that liberalism needs.
Re-conceptualizing liberalism will require that we think differently about the nature of happiness and autonomy.
Rootstock Liberalism is the alternative to managerial liberalism.
Rootstock liberalism develops the moral basis of society from the ground up, propagating relationships of social trust that provide the moral foundation of culture.

The key ideas of rootstock liberalism are inspired by the work of Emmanuel Levinas and recent work in the ethics of care.
Social life is possible because we invest in each other the authority to command caring responses to our vulnerabilities.
Rootstock liberalism provides a foundation for robust social cooperation by identifying the common thread linking our personal motives and the public welfare.
This is philosophically innovative because it views morality as a product of particular relationships grounded in mutual vulnerability rather than adherence to doctrine, principles, or institutional authority.

The social, economic, and foreign policy problems that we face share a common source-a deficit of care.
Powerlessness, apathy, mistrust, and cynicism are motivational deficits that can be erased only by repairing relationships.
Thus, an ethic of responsibility and care emphasizes, not only the distribution of resources or structural features of government, but also the practices and institutions that build connections between people and enable people to govern themselves.
An ethic of care and responsibility can reform economic markets, the professions, and the workplace.

Relationships require the motive of care for their maintenance.
Government policies must encourage care and discourage activities that inhibit social trust, empathy, and our willingness to be concerned with the vulnerabilities of others.
Only an ethic of care can solve the prisoner’s dilemma and avoid the tragedy of the commons thus helping to solve problems such as global warming that require extraordinary cooperation.
An ethic of care and responsibility helps explain how we can modify incentives to restructure government regulation, foreign policy, and the structure of the corporation.
Some of the rhetoric and policies of contemporary liberals such as President Obama reflect aspects of rootstock liberalism.

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