Yet just a few years later, Cold War liberalism emerged as a rejection of the optimism that flourished before the mid-20th century’s crises. This was a liberalism of fear, as another Cold War liberal intellectual, the Harvard professor Judith Shklar, said. In a way, fear was understandable: Liberalism had enemies. The Cold War changed all that. “We must be aware of the dangers which lie in our most generous wishes,” the Columbia professor and Cold War liberal Lionel Trilling explained.

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Persons: Isaiah Berlin, Judith Shklar, Robert Oppenheimer, ” Frustratingly, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Bernie Sanders, Lionel Trilling Organizations: Communist, Oxford, Communists Locations: China, Eastern Europe, overreact, America, Soviet Union, French, Columbia