WHAT do America's right-wing tea-partiers and left-wing progressives have in common? Enough, says our former colleague Clive Crook, that they can both usefully be called liberals—in the global sense of the word. In a review of "Liberalism: The Life of an Idea" by Edmund Fawcett (also a former colleague), Mr Crook approves of the work's identification of four basic characteristics of liberalism: "acceptance of conflict, resistance to power, belief in progress and civic respect." America's right and left both broadly adhere to these liberal principles, and that separates their ideologies from authoritarian, totalitarian or theocratic ones.
