2026-04-03
25 分钟The Economist.
For more than 180 years, The Economist has done two things:
tell people what's going on in the world
and then try to persuade them to act in certain ways.
The "what to do" part of that mission has been shaped by a set of ideas
that cohered into a political philosophy in 19th-century Britain, then went global.
It's called liberalism.
If you're American, that word may force you to stop listening now.
Liberal has different connotations in the US, where it's become a slur meaning government taxing and spending more.
That's not what The Economist means by liberalism.
We mean a pragmatic way of doing politics that's neither conservative,
because it doesn't seek to return to a prior age,
nor socialist, because it's concerned with freedom
and is pro-capitalism (with some caveats).
Liberals are centrists, moderates, but they can sometimes be radical when the situation demands it.
I'm John Prideaux, and this is Checks and Balance from The Economist.
My guest this week thinks we are in one of those moments.
Adrian Wooldridge was a journalist at The Economist for 32 years.
He wrote the Lexington, Schumpeter, and Bagehot columns at various different times.
And he has a new book out called "Centrists of the World, Unite!: The Lost Genius of Liberalism".