Risking Utopia: On the Edge of a New Democracy

Agar Adamson is the author of Letters of Agar Adamson, 1914–19 and former chair of the Department of Political Science at Acadia University in Nova Scotia.

Risking Utopia is an interesting, if somewhat polemical, voyage of
discovery of nation and of self. Democracy, as the author has
discovered, is not an unambiguous straight line. Rather, it can be
likened to concentric circles—full of fogs and even blindness—that
lead to compromise. At one point, Manji writes of her “new respect for
liberalism, by which I mean openness to learn and to marshall ...
lessons to practical ends.” This is the essence of her message:
whereas dogma closes one’s mind, liberalism forces one to continue
learning. Risking Utopia would have benefited from more careful editing.