Moral Philosophy: my reaction to Samuel Moin seems to be very close to that of the very sharp John Ganz. Moyn pretends to be a friend to Old Liberalism and an enemy to Cold War Liberalism by constructing an Old Liberalism that never existed at all, anywhere. It leaves me wondering just what the point of it all is:

John Ganz: The Book of Liberal Maladies: ‘On Samuel Moyn's Cold War Liberalism…. Moyn wants to represent himself as not a critic of liberalism per se but as the recoverer of a more salutary tradition. But he can’t ever really bring himself to do a full-throated defense of that tradition. This gets him tangled up in all kinds of knots…. “Before the Cold War, liberalism largely… an apologia for laissez-faire economic policy… entangled in imperialist expansion and racist hierarchy...” Then he writes that prior to the Cold War, liberalism was “emancipatory and futuristic…” Moyn seems to want to speak in favor of social liberalism. But it also shares the reactive and restraining impulses that he wants to make characteristic of Cold War liberalism…. What does Moyn actually like about liberalism that was lost during the Cold War? He mentions… liberalism’s encounter with romanticism. But… the romantic turn in liberalism was in many ways brought about by disillusionment with and abandonment of revolutionary promise… aristocratic in character, and in some cases, indicated a friendliness to political reaction… <unpopularfront.news/p/the-book-of-liber…>