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

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Dunt does not take an idealistic stance, but rather honestly examines liberalism's failings as well as its successes.

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. From that perspective is the book Liberalism : The Life Of An Idea of Edward Fawcett a much better choice.These are among the most important political battles of our time, and the adjective “liberal” is our most important weapon.

Liberal believers would recognize not the equal rightness of other beliefs but the equal sincerity of the men and women who hold those beliefs. Political journalist Ian Dunt has wrriten an urgent book for our times that is a must-read for everyone seeking to understand how western politics got to where it is today. 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. From Viktor Orban in Hungary, to Brexit in Britain, to Donald Trump in America, nationalists have launched an all-out assault on liberal values. While these chapters do nothing to justify the title of the book, the highly readable delineation of liberal thought culminating in the tension between Hayek and Keynes is a highly recommendable read for anyone interested in the history of ideas.In a soaring narrative that stretches from the English Civil War to the 2008 financial crash and the rise of populism, Ian Dunt tells the epic story of the development of liberal thought.

Many of us will choose instead to be members of different communities, and the intensity of our commitment will vary across the plurality of our memberships.

From Viktor Orban in Hungary, to Brexit in Britain, to Donald Trump in America, nationalists are launching an all-out assault on liberal values. So populist demagogues are wrong to claim that once they have won an election, they represent or embody “the will of the people,” and they can do anything they want. From Brexit Britain to Donald Trump's America, nationalists are launching an all-out assault on liberal values.

Canada’s “asymmetric federalism,” which grants greater rights to French-speaking Quebec, is the democratic and collaborative work of an assertive minority and a liberal nation.Based on a sweeping and fascinating review of the genesis of liberal thought, makes a compelling argument to reject the nationalist garbage of Trump/Johnson and just generally try to become a less comprehensively awful society. Citizenship involves a commitment that excludes all others; secondary associations are a threat to the integrity of the republic.