Obama Mounts Strong Defense of Economic Liberalism In His Second Inaugural

Especially compared to his very in-the-moment crisis-focused first inaugural address, Barack Obama's second inaugural today was surprisingly timeless and detached from the particular circumstances of the winter of 2012-2013. Instead he offered a straightforward and fairly abstract case for economic liberalism in the American sense—a not-even-slightly anti-capitalism ideology that nonetheless believes in the importance of a robust welfare state and select government interventions in the economy to overcome collective action problems. Summing up the ideological brief, Obama even indulged in American liberalism's favorite ideological tic—the insistence that it's not an ideology at all, but simply a pragmatic response to changing circumstances. And it's a good speech too! A lot of it dealt with "social" issues or foreign affairs, but in terms of economics I would say this was ...