"The revolutions of our own time offer neither national liberation nor national renewal."

Michael Walzer, Revolutionologist

The political theorist’s new book on national liberation can’t answer one key question: Why have those words become obsolete?

By 

Thomas Meaney

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

"The revolutions of our own time offer neither national liberation nor national renewal. The official US fear of social revolution can, for the time being, be retired: From Kiev to Cairo and beyond, with only a few exceptions, we live in a time of competitive elitisms and pseudo-political revolutions. Each one promises, with ever more effective media, to restore some integral basis for political rights and liberties—to finally and truly represent the people—but turns out to be the messy means for replacing one elite with another. Why and how this has happened is not a question that interests Walzer."