the willingness of liberal systems to accept self-criticism is, in fact, the feature of liberalism that critical methods like postmodern Theory exploit to undermine it. When done cynically, as with Theory, it can destroy people’s trust in the liberal system and obscure from them that it is this system that has made modernity possible.

Liberalism is perhaps best understood as a desire to gradually make society fairer, freer, and less cruel, one practical goal after another. This is because liberalism is a system of conflict resolution, not a solution to human conflicts. In being a system that works through the inputs of its participants, it offers up no one in particular in whom