One problem of the new liberal is the way he is misunderstood by the old liberals. Most of them have read what has been written here as advocating a return to the days of the Vietnam draft, robber barons, Tammany patronage, and coerced prayer. At the same time the new liberal must be willing to risk misunderstanding. Risk is indeed the essence of the movement - the risk of the person who has the different idea in industry or in government. That is why we place such a high value on the entrepreneur. The economic, social and political revitalization we seek is to come only through a dramatic increase in the number of people willing to put themselves on the line to take a chance at losing all, at looking ridiculous.
Risk taking is important not only in career terms but in the way one looks at the world and the possibilities it presents. If you see only a narrow range of choices, if you are a prisoner of conventional, respectable thinking, you are unlikely to find new ways out of our problems. Neoliberals look at the possibilities with a wide-angle lens. For example, some of us, who are on the whole internationalists and free traders, are willing to consider such bizarre ideas as getting out of NATO, forgetting about the Persian Gulf, and embargoing Japanese cars.
One problem we're trying to address with such suggestion is that American industry's ability to compete has been seriously impaired with the amount of money we have spent in the common defense compared to our competition and that we must find some dramatic way to redress the balance.
Risk taking is important not only in career terms but in the way one looks at the world and the possibilities it presents. If you see only a narrow range of choices, if you are a prisoner of conventional, respectable thinking, you are unlikely to find new ways out of our problems. Neoliberals look at the possibilities with a wide-angle lens. For example, some of us, who are on the whole internationalists and free traders, are willing to consider such bizarre ideas as getting out of NATO, forgetting about the Persian Gulf, and embargoing Japanese cars.
One problem we're trying to address with such suggestion is that American industry's ability to compete has been seriously impaired with the amount of money we have spent in the common defense compared to our competition and that we must find some dramatic way to redress the balance.
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