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On page after page, Gopnik portrays liberalism as the only political perspective that is “open to the evidence of experience.” Only liberals, with their capacity for experimentation and “self-correction,” Gopnik contends, are able to perform ungainly but essential tasks like cleaning up the sewers …

Rooney and her readers hope to bask in the self-congratulatory glow of their supposed egalitarianism without ceding any of their accolades—and without acknowledging the uncomfortable truth that, even if economic inequalities were eliminated, other hierarchies would persist. Some people would still …

less innocuous than Rooney’s politically anodyne writing is her inflated reception

I like Rooney when she gloats and strives, when she is limned with the angry light of ambition