"Here is the rich man’s John Rawls. Liberalism is for those who don’t need it; free to those who can afford it and very expensive – if even conceivable – to those who cannot. But the clash of ideas here is more chaotic than confused. Should one deduce that liberalism can’t be derived from the experience of pogroms? In that case, why did Berlin argue that liberalism was the answer to the experiences of this uniquely grim – as he thought – century? Meanwhile, if liberalism is geographically and even ethnically limited, where is its universality? (And what became of Namier’s ‘Jews and other coloured peoples’?) Should one be an English invader in order to be a carrier of liberal ideals? Finally, what’s the point of a tumultuous and volatile and above all ‘cosmopolitan’ society, like that of America, if high liberalism can only be established with common blood and on common soil?"
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Jews from the United KingdomAgnosticsPhilosophers from the United KingdomHistorians from the United KingdomPeople from Riga
Original Language: English
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Christopher Hitchens, "Moderation or Death", London Review of Books, Vol. 20 No. 23 (26 November 1998)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin
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Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British political philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal thinkers of the 20th century.
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