Daniel Pudles  PAUL STARR, an American political thinker,
deserves a bravery award. In “Freedom's Power” he sets out to
rescue the tradition of political liberalism from what he sees
as three distinct kinds of attack or torment. Tackling his task
historically, he traces modern liberalism from its roots, when
it tried to limit arbitrary power in the 17th and 18th
centuries, through the growth of liberal democracy to the
disputed legacy of liberal ideas today.  Mr Starr's first and
least serious tormentors are the rival sloganeers, to right and
to left, who have bent the word liberal into a term of abuse.
Liberals have always looked a soft target. Lenin scoffed that
they would thank executioners for liberating their souls from
earthly clay. The poet Robert Frost jeered that liberals do not
take their own side in a fight. And an old Texas campaign
proverb has it that all you will ever find in the middle of the
road is a dead jack rabbit.  To such raillery Mr Starr replies
with a counter-jibe of his own. Think of