Liberal democracy C.2

Here is an eloquent and brilliantly argued statement of the case for liberty and democracy in today's world. With ringing clarity Professor Salvadori restates and gives fresh meaning to the basic values by which free men and free nations live. Out of the fog of over two hundred different interpretations of the words, "liberty" and "democracy", the author refocuses and clarifies these much used and abused terms. He goes back to the fountainheads of our concepts of liberalism and democracy, from Bacon and Voltaire through Montesquieu, J efferson, Paine, Pestalozzi, and John Stuart Mill. Liberty emerges as a method, not a goal, and emocracy as the set of institutions to which this method gives rise.
Professor Salvadori's dynamic definition of the role of the intellectual, not as a "doer", but, even more important, as a leader, flings a challenge to every thinking reader. Liberty and freedom,says this author, will not continue to exist without a definite act of will. His book clarifies the essence of liberty, strengthens the desire to achieve and maintain it and will serve as an instrument to extend it in a world where most people still do not enjoy it, and where most of those who do remain indifferent or even hostile to it.