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

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Yet to claim that liberalism is the strongest defence against political extremism requires some serious historical editing. I was given this as a present and was so impressed that I bought two more copies for my (grown-up) kids. Dunt balances a detailed mastery of complex issues with a compelling and highly readable style that keeps you turning the pages. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

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 has shown it is none of these things; Liberalism is outspoken, radical and evolves relentlessly. Like all adjectives, “liberal” modifies and complicates the noun it precedes; it has an effect that is sometimes constraining, sometimes enlivening, sometimes transforming. All of Ian Dunt ’s How to be a Liberal is essential reading , but the chapter on Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill is blistering, eye-opening stuff . He specialises in issues around immigration, civil liberties and social justice and appears as a pundit on BBC TV, Sky News and Al-Jazeera.The natural rhythm of most of this book is to go through the biographies of thinkers who have contributed to the development of Liberalism, including the chaotic libertine Benjamin Constant to the founder of Modern British Liberalism. Indeed that you are self-aware and the fundamental object of consciousness does not preclude you being a mere cog in the machine (here read medieval neo-Aristotelianism). The blood is always mixed; the geography changes over the years; God isn’t involved; and the history is entangled with other histories. Most nation-states include ethnic and religious minorities, and their liberalism is tested by their treatment of these groups. For him, as for the democrats he follows, the adjective “liberal” is not only a constraining but also a pluralizing force: it guarantees the existence of “various parties” (which means more than one) and sustains for each the possibility of success.

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. These are among the most important political battles of our time, and the adjective “liberal” is our most important weapon.

While we take responsible measures to ensure that accurate information is given here this event is ultimately the responsibility of the organisation presenting the event. By the end, I had inserted so many little fluorescent yellow tabs to mark moments in this book that I wanted to quote in a review that I had lost my way through it. Students would read novels translated from other languages and study the history and geography of other countries.

Do the damaging excesses of laissez faire liberalism such as austerity still count as representations of liberalism, when the direct and deliberate harm they inflict is so intrinsic ? uk, destroying absurd political logic with withering put-downs (“It’s not just their brains that are small, but their hearts”); and the non-sweary but still biting political commentator on the TV.But the coercive measures necessary to prevent that succession won’t produce the socialism we (liberal socialists) want. I have the suspicion that we are not to far away from liberalism being merely those things which Dunt agrees with. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.