Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Why do we use it?

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

Where does it come from?

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.

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There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn’t anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.

Our inaugural Liberalism for the 21st Century conference, held in Washington, D.C., July 11-12 was a big hit, receiving rave reviews all around. Individual attendees wrote in to us calling the conference “absolutely excellent,” “a stellar lineup,” and “the most interesting, most stimulating, and best organized conference I’ve attended in years.” News reports were equally complimentary, noting the event was “packed with high-quality panels” drawing from “a star-studded cast” that “modeled how liberals across the ideological spectrum might table old left/right divides to focus on the more pressing threat of illiberalism worldwide.”

Here are some of the media commentaries:

Reclaiming Liberalism, in a Time of Peril and Hope by Cathy Young – The Bulwark

“The conference, hosted by the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism and organized by its president, Shikha Dalmia, admirably avoided the trap of liberal self-congratulation. It grappled seriously with challenges to liberalism, both general, encompassing the “post-liberal” critiques, and specific, including liberal solutions to climate change and ways to combat disinformation without censorship.”

A Liberalism Undaunted by First Principles by Luis Parrales – The Dispatch

“Many of the conversations during the two-day conference focused on ways to tackle specific policy challenges—safeguarding elections, strengthening international institutions, addressing climate change—but what struck me most about the gathering was how many in attendance seemed just as eager to explore the theoretical challenges to liberalism and respond to matters of first principles. In doing so, it was impossible not to notice a disconnect between liberalism as painted by its fervent critics and liberalism as envisioned by some of its most committed advocates.”

“The Liberalism for the 21st Century conference did not try to resolve these admittedly notable disagreements. On the contrary, it highlighted that even those who embrace the liberal label and worry about the rise of illiberalism have different approaches and points of emphasis. Multiculturalist liberals and feminist liberals do not always agree or reach a clear solution. Neither do libertarian liberals or more egalitarian liberals.”

“But by the same token, the varieties of liberalism on display at the conference suggest the philosophy is far more varied than post-liberal critics have granted. While the latter present liberalism as an ideology that’s devoid of local or national attachments or unconcerned with advancing a vision of “the good,” the liberals in attendance had clearly thought seriously about these questions.”

“With those goals in mind, the Liberalism for the 21st Century conference envisioned what a liberal realignment might look like—at least for some of the most engaged participants in these debates. It modeled how liberals across the ideological spectrum might table old left/right divides to focus on the more pressing threat of illiberalism worldwide.”=