![]() ![]() ![]() Even when he singles out the cliched cases of slavery and Nazism, he refuses to draw a line between good and evil, for fear that once a line is drawn, it may be used by the evil to legitimize their own use of power-and what if, he asks, "'we' are the evil ones?" (p. ![]() Neal ends up refusing to draw-as a matter of principle-any line between what a liberal should and should not accept from others. However, it's irritating because Neal's turn away from the theorists and their "perfectionist" rules and principles does not really leave him on firmer ground, but rather unmoors him into that hazy, self-indulgent self-consciousness of the post-modern thinker, in which one becomes afraid to make the most obvious moral judgments. It's rewarding because Neal, an associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont, Burlington, ably surveys the major contemporary theoretical debates while taking pains to stake out more solid ground than that of the airy theorists. ![]() For those interested in current academic debates about liberalism, Patrick Neal's Liberalism and Its Discontents (New York University Press, 1997) will be both a rewarding and an irritating book. ![]()
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