LIBERALISM IS THE DEFENSE OF REPUBLICAN LIBERTY:

[W]alzer has a knack for drawing the reader into his argument as he thinks out loud, doubling back on himself, testing his ideas against experience, and checking his own impulses in a friendly, conversational tone. As he proceeds ever so reasonably, he carries you right along with him, having you nodding in agreement until, at times, you are surprised to discover where he has led you.

These qualities are on display in Walzer's most recent book, The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On "Liberal" as an Adjective, which is part memoir, part theoretical reinterpretation of liberalism, and part capstone to a long career. (On the first page of his preface, Walzer remarks, poignantly, "this may be my last book.") In it, he examines his most important personal, political, and professional commitments--to democracy, socialism, nationalism, communitarianism, feminism, academia, and Judaism--asking in each case what it means for such a commitment to be "liberal."

In doing so, he turns our attention away from thinking about "liberalism" and instead toward the project of his subtitle: thinking about "liberal" as an "adjective," or what he calls "a new way of describing and defending" the political commitments he has endorsed over many decades. Our primary commitments, he suggests--the "nouns" we embrace, like democracy, socialism, or feminism--name the goods or ways of life we pursue, whereas "liberal" describes a specific manner of pursuing them. It requires that we be "open-minded, generous, and tolerant"; neither relativists nor dogmatists; and ever pragmatic, skeptical, and pluralist. The adjective brings certain "liberal qualifications" to all the nouns it modifies: "the constraint of political power; the defense of individual rights; the pluralism of parties, religions, and nations; the openness of civil society; the rights of opposition and disagreement; the accommodation of difference; the welcome of strangers."

Walzer's descriptions of his own liberal commitments make this picture more concrete. To be a democrat is to recognize the right of the people to shape and pursue its own common life; but to be a liberal democrat is also to oppose all forms of majoritarian tyranny over minorities, to "defend a state where power is constrained, where the common life is pluralist and inclusive, . . . and where every man and woman is a political agent, able to join any and all meetings and movements and free to stay home--the equal of all the others." To be a socialist is to be committed to egalitarianism, the reduction of poverty, and a world in which wealth cannot be converted into political power or access to goods like education or health care; but to be a liberal socialist is also to insist on building this world through persuasion rather than force, resisting the claims of an unrepresentative "vanguard" to impose its egalitarian vision forcibly on unenlightened fellow citizens. To be a nationalist is to "put the interests of [one's] own nation first;" but to be a liberal nationalist is to "do that and recognize the right of other people to do the same thing--and . . . then insist that all the 'firsts' accommodate one another." And so on. As he weaves back and forth between the commitments and their liberal qualifications, Walzer combines a robust defense of moral and political ideals with an honest recognition (and not merely grudging acceptance) that they must be pursued in partnership (and heated debate) with fellow citizens who are equally committed to their own different and opposing ideals.

Tweet   @brothersjudd