How to Be a Liberal: The Story of Freedom and the Fight for its Survival

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What they most want is to pass laws that ensure their victory in the next election, which may turn out to be the last meaningful election. The power of the mob, public opinion, Rousseau’s will of the people if we remember led to the tyranny of the French Revolution. And we defend nations that need states against any opposing nation-states: Kurds, Palestinians, and Tibetans, for example, against Turkey, Israel, and China—but we do this without denying the national rights of Turks, Israelis, and Chinese. But this book argues there still is a liberalism out there, one which has been unreasonably trashed upon, one which the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, but if we continue using it it's still the most powerful tool we have in all us living together rather than not dying together. Being Liberal for a long time and being jaded about today's political situation, this was a good overview of history of liberalism and definitely an inspirational of why I became one in the first place.

You come away almost feeling you got inside the heads and hearts of the likes of Benjamin Constant and James Stuart Mill. Most nation-states include ethnic and religious minorities, and their liberalism is tested by their treatment of these groups.That liberal institutions and people do illiberal things is not necessarily a criticism of liberalism. Liberals” are still an identifiable group, and I assume that readers of Dissent are members of the group. I imagine sitting in a pub with a beer and having a good old fashioned political argument with Ian Dunt.

You'll read about the liberal emphasis on property rights of John Locke to the egalitarian liberalism of John Stuart Mill to the laissez-faire liberalism of Friedrich Hayek to the "liberalism" know today as identity politics. This powerful storytelling comes to life fully in Dunt’s coverage of our global immigration crisis and the human cost of nationalist policy.It was wonderful and refreshing to read about people from marginalised communities and understand how they shaped liberalism too. That was an example of left populism, but it is comparable to President Trump’s attack on the courts—populism from the right. In this way, I felt like he conceded too much to the illiberal side of progressive thought on these issues. I assume that the adjective “liberal” works in much the same way with regard to Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists—and I will try to say something about liberal religions generally in a moment. He is not willing to give up without a fight, though, and outlines the work that needs to be done to retake lost ground.

In fact, almost every self respecting liberal would say neither of these things but point out that a law which governs how an individual dresses when it has no impact on anyone else is fundamentally illiberal.

It is written in a very easy to follow manner with lots of useful historical background about many events which would be familiar to most folk. They didn’t leave for these reasons – political freedom, but economic freedom – that other pillar of liberal values. Liberal Republicans are possible, as I’ve just said, even if not currently visible; liberal conservatives, too. A multinational, multiracial, multi-religious country like the United States is to a much greater degree defined by its politics. Not an awful book by any means and I learned quite a lot in the first half, but not as good as I'd hoped.