, and after the first paragraph, I was hooked.The story of liberalism, as liberals tell it, is rather like the legend of St. George and the dragon. After many centuries of hopelessness and superstition, St. George, in the guise of Rationality, appeared in the world somewhere about the sixteenth century. The first dragons upon whom he turned his lance were those of despotic kingship and religious intolerance. These battles won, he rested a time, until such questions as slavery, or prison conditions, or the state of the poor, began to command his attention. During the nineteenth century, his lance was never still, prodding this way and that against the inert scaliness of privilege, vested interest, or patrician insolence. But, unlike St. George, he did not know when to retire. The more he succeeded, the more he became bewitched with the thought of a world free of dragons, and the less capable he became of ever returning to private life. He needed his dragons. He could only live by fighting for causes— the people, the poor, the exploited, the colonially oppressed, the underprivileged and the underdeveloped. As an ageing warrior, he grew breathless in his pursuit of smaller and smaller dragons—for the big dragons were now harder to come by.He doesn’t make the final literary link, but I couldn’t help but think that this is a description of Don Quixote. (He thanks his wife for helping him edit his work, which made C. conclude that he must be married to a lit major—it is the perfect combination after all). Anyway, anyone who can take the often dry nature of political philosophy and insert dragons ought to be congratulated, whatever his conclusion.
This is the same author who wrote Politics: A Very Short Introduction
, the most succinct overview of the history of political thought I’ve read. For PHC people, that means Freedoms I & II condensed to 100 pages. I must offer this warning though: have extra highlighters on hand.
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