Eric has penned a complex book, precisely because it is so comprehensive an analysis of liberalism, its proud past and accomplishments, and its discontents. I agree with Joan that the most controversial of Eric's arguments is that we must rehabilitate and fight for liberalism, while "admitting our mistakes." She calls this a contradiction; I would call it a necessary tension.

Joan's right that some liberal "mistakes" (politically speaking) flow from liberalism's proudest accomplishments. There'd be no backlash without civil rights; no anti-abortion movement without Roe v. Wade; and for that matter, no vast undertow of hostility to government and taxes without liberal policies that helped lift many millions of Americans into the middle (and increasingly upper-middle) class. Some of the recent political weakness of liberalism is largely cyclical, just as the political power of conservatism may not survive an extended period of conservative misgovernment.

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