Russell Blackford
Russell Blackford is a Conjoint Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle. He is the author of Freedom of Religion and the Secular State (2012), Humanity Enhanced: Genetic choice and the challenge for liberal democracies (2014), The Mystery of Moral Authority (2016), Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination: Visions, minds, ethics (2017), and, most recently, The Tyranny of Opinion: Conformity and the future of Liberalism (2019). His personal website is www.russellblackford.com. In 2014, he was inducted as a Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism.
In an era of dogmatism, polarisation, and intolerance, visible on both the right and left wings of politics, liberalism needs more love. Part of its image problem is a widespread perplexity about what values and principles it really stands for. In different times and places, liberalism has meant many different, even contradictory, things. There are, among others, British and American traditions of ... (read more)
Whatever benefits it has brought, aggressive globalisation has also dislocated industries, wrecked communities, and fostered social alienation. Large numbers of working-class, blue-collar, and rural voters (these categories overlap) feel abandoned, anxious, and economically insecure, even when they have, as individuals, held on to well-paid jobs. This offers fertile ground to political candidates ... (read more)