A central character in the hit sitcom “Parks and Recreation” (2009-2015), Leslie Knope serves as deputy director of her office in the city hall of the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. She is also a distinctive sort of liberal.
Leslie believes fervently in her pure intentions and government’s capacity under her direction to improve people’s lives. A Democrat, she idolizes Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright. Quirky, cheerful, warm, and caring, Leslie is prone to clueless interventions in colleagues’ and friends’ lives owing to her failure to imagine that others could be unmoved by or averse to her well-meaning plans. She loves her small town and searches for projects to promote community even as her initiatives often proceed contrary to Pawnee citizens’ expressed preferences.
In “Liberalism as a Way of Life,” Alexandre Lefebvre argues that Leslie represents “a singularly compelling representation of the liberal spirit.” For Lefebvre, a professor of politics and philosophy at the University of Sydney, that is high praise. Liberalism is not merely one attractive option among many moral and political outlooks, according to Lefebvre, himself an unabashed liberal. He contends in his new book that contemporary liberalism coincides with progressive politics and constitutes the one best way of living. At the same time, Lefebvre paradoxically maintains that liberalism’s superiority consists in part in its affirmation that there is no single path that leads to happiness and human flourishing.
This paradox – that academic liberalism denies a greatest good or authoritative set of virtues but claims that true liberals embody both – fuels the disparity between how liberals often see themselves and how others frequently see them. Especially among professors, self-proclaimed liberals typically consider themselves high-minded, empathetic, reasonable, humble, and open to diverse viewpoints. Yet they come across to many as high-handed, moralistic, dogmatic, arrogant, and intolerant.
That drastic mismatch between self-perception and others’ perceptions stems from academic liberalism’s characteristic conceit. It insists on its exclusive prerogative to determine who is enlightened while holding that everyone is equal. And it is prone to regarding as more enlightened and more equal those who excel in proclaiming that government must pursue progressive social and economic policies.
Lefebvre’s book manifests many virtues. The author writes amiably and gracefully. His erudite and accessible arguments distill the main points of complex theories and bring them into focus with arresting examples and vivid analogies.........