In his memoir The World as It Is, Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s closest national security aide, confides that, on the day Obama left the White House, the worry that haunted him most was: ‘What if we were wrong?’ That is, what if liberals had misinterpreted the nature of the post-Cold War period?

‘What if we were wrong?’ is the question Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes set out to explain in their recent The Light That Failed: A Reckoning, which takes Eastern Europe as exhibit A. The book meditates on how liberalism lost its appeal and its themes have clear echoes in East Asia.

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Intro Music: HAYA乐团《迁徙》全员战士风尝试突破

Outtro Music (thanks Stephen for the suggestion, very thematic!): Basement Tapes: Kansas City. Marcus Mumford on vocals and Johnny Depp (!) playing guitar.

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Liberalism: The Light That Failed