Helena Rosenblatt

Well, ideas don't travel in a vacuum.

So I would always say that the facts on the ground to change socioeconomic pressures, changes in the economy, wars, all of this creates conditions, creates conflicts, creates crises.

that liberals then have to confront and deal with.

And that goes to, you know, everybody's talking about the crisis of liberal democracy today and the crisis of liberalism.

Well, there's been a succession of crises.

Liberalism was born in crisis, the crisis of the French Revolution.

And so when these moments happen, when there is extreme tension, when there is new problems, it can throw liberalism sort of

off its kilter for a while.

All sorts of debates occur, become more heated, confused even.

There have been moments in liberalism's history where they literally start to have lists of articles.

What is liberalism?

What do we stand for?

What is true liberalism?

No, that's false liberalism.

And they have these debates.

And as I said before, that can weaken the movement, but it can also bring strength to it, allow it to evolve.

This conflict, a battle of ideas brings out something new that really responds to the crisis that's on the ground.

Yeah.

I've even started to think about the original crisis, you know, the crisis of Napoleon's despotism.

Liberals had had such high hopes for establishing a liberal regime based on constitutional rule and representative government with these rights protecting the individual.