It was in England where, for the first time, a virtuous individualism appeared that was committed to the public defense of freedom against the threat of absolutism. It was there that a liberal-republican political discourse emerged that defended the tight linkage of public good and private interest.

Thus liberalism was born as a public and private discourse of individual virtue that was aimed at impeding the emergence of any despotic arrogance. Nevertheless, in the second half of the 20^th century, a libertarian and neo-liberal trend turned the marketplace into a dogmatic abstraction that justified unlimited and uncontrolled egoism. In Liberals, José María Lassalle lays out the need for 21^st Century Liberalism to return to the virtuous principles of its founding fathers - John Locke, Adam Smith and Edmund Burke.  The Liberals now have the responsibility of facing their own ghosts of the past and once again leading in the defense of the politics of duty, not those of profit. Politics at the service of freedom: concern at the control of power; politics that would ensure the establishment of institutional mechanisms that would impede corruption and anti-market conspiracies that are plotted in the shadow of governments; politics that would fight dogmatism and defend tolerance as an identifying mark of our culture. Facing the biggest crisis of the last decades, recovering virtue and values is critical. It is a task for which Liberals are better prepared than anyone else.

Translated by Gabriel S. Baum

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