Struggle for a Decent Politics

A testament to what it means to be liberal by one of the most prominent political philosophers of our eraThere 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 is a universal set of values ('it must be universal,' he writes, 'since it is under attack everywhere'), Walzer reminds us in this inspiring book why those values are worth fighting for.