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

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This book has an interesting premise and and strong argument, although there is nothing particularly novel in its interpretation of history and it is a bit oversimplistic in the binary definitions of "liberalism" and "nationalism" and co-opts historical figures who would not recognise themselves as liberals in the modern sense to the cause. Where would workers rights be without the trade union movement, or women’s rights without the Suffragettes and feminism? Dunt's book is a timely and important contribution to the debate about liberalism in the 21st century.

Liberal democracy sets limits on majority rule—usually with a constitution that guarantees individual rights and civil liberties, establishes an independent judicial system that can enforce the guarantee, and opens the way for a free press that can defend it. 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. Liberal nations are not created and defined by “blood and soil” or by divine appointment or by a history that starts at the beginning of time and is never interrupted.My parents loved freedom to pursue their interests, which strangely reproduced their pre-existing values of social cohesion, church, family, gardening, home making.

In fact, I would argue that a sense of humor is essential for any liberal who wants to be effective in the world. Just as liberal socialists reject the idea of vanguard dictatorship, so liberal believers reject any use of coercion in religious matters. Not an awful book by any means and I learned quite a lot in the first half, but not as good as I'd hoped. Developing his theme through the lesser-known figures of Benjamin Constant and Harriet Taylor Mill (given equal billing with John Stuart Mill, as Mill himself did), we come on to the chapter titled ‘Death’, where the ideals of liberalism are destroyed by the two new twentieth-century systems of government, communism and fascism.It seems to meander its way through the history of political thought without any particular destination or clear argument to hold it together. So we are, or should be, nationally as well as religiously liberal—which means that no theological or ideological, religious or secular commitments can ever be described as un-Jewish.