Adam Gopnik, A Thousand Small Sanities.

      


- In these dark times, an age of extreme polarisation, warring factions, Trump stupidity, it's necessary to remind ourselves of the great Western liberal traditions that are the very foundation of our free and caring societies. 

- This book is a gem. It's exceptionally well written and argued by long time New Yorker essayist and best selling author Adam Gopnik. Being rich in history, ideas and analysis, it's not an easy read. But, given concentration, it handsomely pays off. I can see myself returning to this book over and over again.

- The right’s critique of liberalism is well known: change risks order. Respect for the military and reverence for religion are uppermost in its ideology. Benjamin Disreali, British Conservative leader, understood that nationalist jingoism trumped economic interest for the working classes. 

- Secularism, cosmopolitanism, permissiveness, relativism, on the other hand - these liberal boasts have a catastrophic effect on ordinary people. 

- We are living through a revolt by the right against liberal reason. The EU, for example, is deemed a liberal folly. But this view of liberalism is a cartoon.

- ‘Intersectionality’ is currently a dominant political theory that paints a familiar, broad picture of oppression through 'cultural framing and control', usually referred to as 'identity politics'. The sophisticated version identifies types of difference and oppression that are invisible to most eyes.

- The book is full of fabulous proclamations and summations: 

• ‘The right wing wants cultural victories and gets nothing but political ones; while the left wing wants political victories and gets only cultural ones’; 
• On free speech and its discontents: ‘Unless the speaker is actually about to cut your throat you have to let him work his jaw’. (But hate speech is a different matter, because of its harm to minorities); 
• ‘A thousand small sanities are usually wiser than one big idea’; 
• The rise of populism: ‘...these problems are permanent...these passions - the desire for simplicity, the hunger for a more closed and clannish society, the sheer anxiety of living with uncertainty - are always ready to explode’; 
• 'Liberal institutions and practices are fragile'; 
• 'Those societies that glorify militarism almost invariably lose wars'.
• ‘We have to believe in passionate policies, passionate in their affirmation of values and principles...the difference between centrists and liberals is that centrists emphasise the difficulty of these choices, while liberals emphasise their simplicity.’