E soprattutto ha richiamato l'impegno che ci è richiesto per promuovere e conservare una società aperta, solidale, rispettosa di ogni singola persona. 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.

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. The message is no less than a rallying cry for Liberals to embrace the tradition of Radical Liberalism and stand out and proud about their values. I highly recommend you pick it up if you want to gain a wider historical context for the current political situation and better understand your own liberal perspective.Was it right" he asks, "to exempt Sikhs, who wear a turban, from legislation requiring the wearing of motorcycle helmets? His realisation that you cannot truly trust sensory perception is not only the basis of the doubt which still bares his name, but of idealist philosophy.

Dunt describes this argument as "A closed system of perfect confidence…it proves itself, in a circular motion, by virtue of what it contains. I imagine sitting in a pub with a beer and having a good old fashioned political argument with Ian Dunt. For the most part it is good fun and informative in a sort of GCSE way but such a lung bursting thrash through modern history does means some things are left out and other bits somewhat unclear.However, instead of an explanation I found merely a description of a phenomenon that I was already familiar with: liberal failure. It is an interesting question whether there are groups, parties, ideologies, identities that can’t be modified by the adjective “liberal. Liberalism in the United States is our very modest version of social democracy, as in “New Deal liberalism. The struggle has already been long, and there have been and will be compromises along the way—with opponents whose rights we have to respect.

In some ways they are more pervasive and insidious than nationalism and present a powerful threat to Liberal ideas. A really powerful book charting liberalism from its inception, showing how different thinkers conceived of liberty and human rights until the present day. 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.The rise of liberal governance in Europe coincided with the expansion of the transatlantic slave trade, the newly independent United States disenfranchised and legally dehumanised Black people and continued to transport them across the Atlantic in great numbers for generations and then discriminated against them for generations more. I have already raised doubts about a liberal communist; the Stalinist version of communism certainly can’t abide the adjective, though I am sure that there are liberal communists—in the nineteenth century certainly, and perhaps today—who believe in a plurality of communes of different sorts. Civil rights and civil liberty are the rightful possession of every member of the political community—Jews, black people, women, debtors, felons, the poorest of the poor. Similarly, men and women who believe that the religion or irreligion of the others consigns them to eternal subordination (or damnation) and that they, the true believers, are morally obligated to rescue them from that fate—they are illiberal, and actively so. The refusal to acknowledge these identifications and to value the pluralism that results from them seems to me illiberal.

Dunt's book is a timely and important contribution to the debate about liberalism in the 21st century.

Socialists are defined, according to Rosselli, by their “active adhesion to the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Ian Dunt has multiple personas: the sweary critic of Remainiacs and Twitter, lambasting Parliamentary dunces with choice invective (“brain like a piece of crumpled paper, spluttering out little scraps of bullshit”); the polemicist of politics. He is not willing to give up without a fight, though, and outlines the work that needs to be done to retake lost ground. The latter part of the book examines the modern rise of populism and the challenge it poses to liberal democracy. 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.