The discussion here draws largely upon
the debates over liberal citizenship in the
United States, where the individualist and
state-limiting aspects of liberalism have
been most fully reified and the consequences
of these aspects most severely criticized
(Hartz, 1955; Smith, 1997). The word
‘liberalism,’ to be sure, has acquired a malodorous
quality among politicians and many
political commentators in the USA since the
1960s. Nonetheless, the fact remains that
almost all mainstream political discourse in
the USA, regardless of the speaker’s party,