(p. C7) Almost elected president of his native Peru and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa combines politics and the written word with a distinction that makes him a Grand Old Man, of whom there are far too few left in the world. As befits this status, he is a liberal in the classic sense that derives from the biblical injunction to do to others what you would have them do to you.
He was not always a liberal. As Mr. Vargas Llosa recalls in the beautifully and carefully written opening chapter of “The Call of the Tribe,” he had been a communist in the 1950s.
. . .
(p. C8) José Ortega y Gasset is introduced as “one of the most intelligent and elegant liberal philosophers of the twentieth century.”
. . .
Conceding that Ortega may have been naive, Mr. Vargas Llosa goes on to sign off this chapter with a personal ex cathedra statement: “Liberalism is above all an attitude toward life and society based on tolerance and respect, a love for culture, a desire to coexist with others and a firm defense of freedom as a supreme value.”
. . .
Hayek’s book “The Road to Serfdom” was published in 1944 but Margaret Thatcher, who read it as a student at Oxford, seems to have delayed until she was prime minister before making it compulsory reading for anyone with a sense of politics. She had found an authority for her conviction that central planning was incompatible with freedom.
For the full review, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date February 3, 2023, and has the title “‘The Call of the Tribe’ Review: Mario Vargas Llosa’s Dinner Party.”)
The book under review is:
Llosa, Mario Vargas. The Call of the Tribe. Translated by John King. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.