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87c1c1c
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values such as these derived from longstanding religious or communitarian practices.
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Tony Judt |
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c140de1
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Today's schoolchildren and college students can imagine little else but the search for a lucrative job.
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Tony Judt |
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0edadd6
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The idea that it was the state's business to know what was good for people--while we accept it uncomplainingly in school curriculums and hospital practices--smacked of eugenics and perhaps euthanasia.
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Tony Judt |
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f083c48
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If 1989 was about re-discovering liberty, what limits are we now willing to place upon it? Even in the most 'freedom-loving' societies, freedom comes with constraints. But if we accept some limitations--and we always do--why not others? Why
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Tony Judt |
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028b7d4
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otherwise--to deny distinctions of class or wealth or influence--is just a way to promote one set of interests above another.
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Tony Judt |
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1103c27
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Keynes's warning on this matter: "[i]t is not sufficient that the state of affairs which we seek to promote should be better than the state of affairs which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better to make up for the evils of the transition."
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Tony Judt |
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6edac25
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Take humiliation: what if we treated it as an economic cost, a charge to society? What if we decided to 'quantify' the harm done when people are shamed by their fellow citizens as a condition of receiving the mere necessities of life?
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Tony Judt |
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b274f3e
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It is tempting to conform: community life is a lot easier where everyone appears to agree with everyone else, and where dissent is blunted by the conventions of compromise.
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Tony Judt |
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4d5cec0
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We face today two practical dilemmas. The first can be succinctly described as the return of the 'social question'.
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Tony Judt |
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d64c84e
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how was a liberal society to respond to the poverty, overcrowding, dirt, malnutrition and ill health of the new industrial cities? How were the working masses to be brought into the community--as voters, as citizens, as participants--without upheaval, protest and even revolution?
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Tony Judt |
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0a20406
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The history of the 20th century West is in large measure the history of efforts to answer these questions. The responses proved spectacularly successful:
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Tony Judt |
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7b3eacf
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The second dilemma we face concerns the social consequences of technological change.
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Tony Judt |
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e6cb91d
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The likely consequences of this coming age of uncertainty--when a growing number of people will have good reason to fear job loss and long-term redundancy--will be a return to dependency upon the state.
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Tony Judt |
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7022a32
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a political class deeply sensitive to its moral and social responsibilities.
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Tony Judt |
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6662fb0
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Politically speaking, ours is an age of the pygmies.
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Tony Judt |
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845aec9
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If we compare the gap separating rich and poor, whether measured by overall assets or annual income, we find that in every continental European country as well as in Great Britain and the US, the gap shrank dramatically in the generation following 1945.
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Tony Judt |
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1e624d9
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The disappearance of so many regimes so closely bound to a revolutionary narrative marked the death knell of a 200-year promise of radical progress.
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Tony Judt |
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64fb7d6
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Moreover, it was social democracy and the welfare state that bound the professional and commercial middle classes to liberal institutions in the wake of World War II.
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Tony Judt |
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2b9e501
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Whether capitalist economies thrive best under conditions of freedom is perhaps more of an open question than we like to think.
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Tony Judt |
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979bdbf
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high taxation was not regarded in these years as an affront. On the contrary, steep rates of progressive income tax were seen as a consensual device to take excess resources away from the privileged
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Tony Judt |
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cc26c77
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For three decades following the war, economists, politicians, commentators and citizens all agreed that high public expenditure, administered by local or national authorities with considerable latitude to regulate economic life at many levels, was good policy.
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Tony Judt |
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faf2a22
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Even at their height, the Scandinavian welfare states left the economy to the private sector--which was then taxed at very high rates to pay for social, cultural and other services. What Swedes, Finns, Danes and Norwegians offered themselves was not collective ownership but the guarantee of collective protection. With the exception of Finland, Scandinavians all had private pension schemes--something that would have seemed very odd to the En..
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Tony Judt |
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fba35f5
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And few can deny that welfarism, taken to extremes, carries a whiff of do as you're told!: there were moments in postwar Scandinavia when the enthusiasm for eugenics and social efficiency suggested not just a certain insensitivity to recent history but also to the natural human desire for autonomy and independence.
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Tony Judt |
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b05a8f9
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since throughout the years 1945-49 a consistent majority of Germans believed that 'Nazism was a good idea, badly applied'.
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Tony Judt |
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6c35406
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in an Apparently Godless Era.
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Tony Judt |
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ec58337
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Elections to Parliament, congressional elections and the choice of National Assembly members are still our only means for converting public opinion into collective action under law. So young people must not abandon faith in our political institutions.
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Tony Judt |
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a96bdba
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Worse, the language of politics itself has been vacated of substance and meaning.
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Tony Judt |
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aa24439
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The democratic failure transcends national boundaries. The embarrassing fiasco of the Copenhagen climate conference of December 2009 is already translating into cynicism and despair among young people:
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Tony Judt |
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39e66f8
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A differenza della memoria, che conferma e rafforza se stessa, la storia contribuisce al disincanto. Quasi tutto cio che ha da offrire e sconfortante, addirittura devastante, il che spiega perche non sia sempre politicamente prudente sbandierare il passato come arma con la quale bastonare un popolo per le sue precedenti colpe. Ma la storia dev'essere imparata, e periodicamente imparata di nuovo.
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Tony Judt |
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a2fd1ae
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Like large-scale state projects elsewhere, the Cassa was inefficient, and more than a little corrupt. Most of its benefits went to the favored coastal regions; much of the new industry that it brought in was capital-intensive and thus created few jobs.
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Tony Judt |
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3d469d7
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In the first place, this is a history of Europe's reduction. The constituent states of Europe could no longer aspire, after 1945, to international or imperial status. The two exceptions to this rule--the Soviet Union and, in part, Great Britain--were both only half-European in their own eyes and in any case, by the end of the period recounted here, they too were much reduced. Most of the rest of continental Europe had been humiliated by def..
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postwar
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Tony Judt |
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fa8c765
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Hence the famous bon mot of Lord Ismay, who took up his post as NATO's
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Tony Judt |
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4766d1c
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Rilke's admonition: love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves while providing the security within which that self may flourish. As
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Tony Judt |
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2df0923
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La Primera Guerra Mundial destruyo la vieja Europa; la Segunda Guerra Mundial genero las condiciones para una nueva.
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Tony Judt |
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89c33c0
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En palabras de Sartre: <>.
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Tony Judt |
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9b7c120
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By the end of the 1970s, a clear majority of the employed population of Britain, Germany, France, the Benelux countries, Scandinavia and the Alpine countries worked in the service sector--communications, transport, banking, public administration and the like. Italy, Spain and Ireland were very close behind.
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Tony Judt |
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0f58e1c
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A handful of individual football stars--not necessarily the most talented, but those boasting good looks, beautiful wives and an animated private life--assumed a role in European public life and popular newspapers hitherto reserved for movie starlets or minor royalty. When David Beckham (an English player of moderate technical gifts but an unsurpassed talent for self-promotion) moved from Manchester United to Real Madrid in 2003, it made he..
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david-beckham
football
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Tony Judt |
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8b1de6a
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I am, I discover in late middle age, a work in progress.
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Tony Judt |
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718fb36
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The greatest beneficiaries of the modern welfare state, after all, were the middle classes.
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Tony Judt |
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c50eecd
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Eurocommunism was thus a contradiction in terms, despite the best efforts of its spokesmen.
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Tony Judt |