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

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A liberal monarch rules alone and doesn’t rotate in and out of office, but he or she recognizes a pluralist politics with constitutional restraints and a plurality of religions. Just as liberal socialists reject the idea of vanguard dictatorship, so liberal believers reject any use of coercion in religious matters. This book, by placing the development of liberalism in its historical context, and re-stating its key tenets in one place, is a valuable contribution to the fight.

In a soaring narrative that stretches from the English Civil War to the 2008 financial crash and the rise of populism, the journalist Ian Dunt tells the epic story of liberalism, from its birth in the fight against absolute monarchy to the modern-day resistance against the new populism. Dunt does not take an idealistic stance, but rather honestly examines liberalism's failings as well as its successes. Liberal” is a strong adjective, and its constraints are binding, obviously, not only on populist demagogues who win elections but also on our favorite leftists if and when they win.

This is a history of ideas as it should be written – brilliant, vivid story-telling about the people who shaped liberalism, the challenges it has faced over the centuries, its commitment to the truth and why it’s now more important than ever to defend it. So we are, or should be, nationally as well as religiously liberal—which means that no theological or ideological, religious or secular commitments can ever be described as un-Jewish. Identity politics usually follows from a narrow focus on group interest, but it is aided and abetted by an illiberal communitarianism.

The first half contains some interesting chapters but most of the second half is a pretty superficial account of the last 15 years - the credit crisis, identity politics, social media - and nothing really new is said about any these subjects as far as I could discern. George Orwell was the first to realise, through his experiences in the Spanish civil war, that fascism and Stalinism were equivalent evils, which he fought against under the umbrella term ‘totalitarianism’. These three countries alone make up 3/8ths of the worlds population, and in China’s case represents a more powerful and sustainable form of nationalism than the Trump variant.E soprattutto ha richiamato l'impegno che ci è richiesto per promuovere e conservare una società aperta, solidale, rispettosa di ogni singola persona.