A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism

by Adam Gopnik

What is liberalism, then? A hatred of cruelty. An instinct about human conduct rooted in a rueful admission of our own fallibility and of the inadequacy of our divided minds to be right frequently enough to act autocratically. A belief that the sympathy that binds human society together can disconnect us from our clannish and suspicious past. A program for permanent reform based on reason and an appeal to argument, aware of human fallibility and open to the lessons of experience. An understanding that small, open social institutions, if no larger than a café or more overtly political than a park, play an outsized role in creating free minds and securing public safety. A faith in rational debate, rather than inherited ritual, and in reform, rather than either revolution or reaction. A belief in radical change through practial measures. A readiness to act—nonviolently but visibly and sometimes in the face of threatened violence—