Joshua L. Cherniss, Liberalism in Dark Times: The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century

Excerpt

Well into his group portrait of mid-twentieth-century “tempered liberals,” Joshua Cherniss acknowledges that the writing of one of them, Reinhold Niebuhr, “may seem to add up to an assembly of attractive but incoherent bromides suspended in unresolved tension.” (p. 161). At moments, Liberalism in Dark Times arouses the same worry. So often in the pages of this book, appealing and unobjectionable pleas for political humility, forbearance, tolerance, and ethical equipoise evanesce the moment they confront intractable challenges. Then the tempered liberal’s guarded maxim, in Albert Camus’ words, “so far, but no further,” yields either to more resolute action or to calls that someone with dirtier hands take over. Indeed, Cherniss takes us only so far, but no further. …