Abstract
Needed is a fresh and energizing idea, together with a big and persuasive book to articulate and promote it-a book that will do for our time what Herbert Croly's The Promise of American Life did for the Progressive era, or the late Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s The Vital Center did for the post-World War II years. Freedom's Power is also highly reminiscent of Herbert Croly's own sweeping (and much longer) historical analysis, with its central thesis that under modern conditions it was imperative for liberalism to adopt the "Hamiltonian means" of an activist state in order to further the "Jeffersonian ends" of individual liberty.