The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On "Liberal" as an Adjective
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“Walzer is perhaps our foremost pilot on these rocky shoals. In his preface, he writes that this may be his last book. One hopes not.”—James Traub, New York Times
There was a time when liberalism was an ism like any other, but that time, writes Michael Walzer, is gone. “Liberal” now conveys not a specific ideology but a moral stance, so the word is best conceived not as a noun but as an adjective—one is a “liberal democrat” or a “liberal nationalist.”
Walzer itemizes the characteristics described by “liberal” in an inventory of his own deepest political and moral commitments—among other things, to the principle of equality, to the rule of law, and to a pluralism that is both political and cultural. Unabashedly asserting that liberalism comprises a universal set of values (“they must be universal,” he writes, “since they are under assault around the world”), Walzer reminds us in this inspiring book why those values are worth fighting for.
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Michael Walzer is emeritus professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. One of America’s foremost political thinkers, he served as editor of the political journal Dissent for more than three decades. He lives in Princeton, NJ.