Just in time for the Liberals’ Vancouver confab

The rise of Michael Ignatieff has Liberals thinking again that liberalism has something to do with thinking. For all his bookish credentials, though, Ignatieff hasn’t sparked a lot of debate about policy and principles. The two American books reviewed in this essay might fill that ideas vacuum. Alan Wolfe’s The Future of Liberalism suggests the bedrock conviction of liberals must be: “As many people as possible should have as much say as is feasible over the direction their lives will take.” And Jedediah Purdy’s A Tolerable Anarchy considers the “interplay between public and private, individual and community, freedom and obligation” as the way to understand liberalism. Food for thought as Grits hed to next week’s Vancouver convention (and Iggy’s coronation).

The Nation