A liberal is, by definition, one whose aim is the furtherance of ever
greater political liberty, freedom of thought, and social justice.
A number of those who thought of themselves as, and were thought of
as,
liberals became apologists for Stalinist or similar regimes
whose most notable characteristics were extreme terror, narrow
dogmatism, social oppression, and economic failure. That is, they
were all that the liberal tradition opposed. How, and why, did
a number of liberals explicitly, and a large
swathe of liberaldom implicitly, overcome this objection?
How did this apparent
paradox come to pass? Why in the 1930s and later do we find a sort
of general infection of the atmosphere in which much of the
intelligentsia moved? Even apart from those who became more or less
addicted to Communism, there was also a stratum that usually gave
the Soviet Union and such regimes some moral advantage over the
West.

First, of course, we should say that there were many liberals—and
in general many on the left—who kept their principles
unsullied, and were often among the strongest opponents of the
Communist despotisms.
Liberal is, indeed, a vague term. Many of us would take a “liberal”
position on some issues, a “conservative” one on others—as most
of the American or British people in fact do (an attitude shared
by the present writer).

These two vaguely differentiated attitudes are the poles within the
normal development, or balance, of a civic or consensual society.
But all those with reasonably critical