¡Vamos, Marquito!

My apartment in Havana is on a rooftop overlooking the sea, which sounds grand and penthousey, but it’s not – it’s the former caretaker’s hut. It also sits above my parents-in-law’s place, which offers challenges, but does mean that most days I wander down for lunch. When I first moved in, I didn’t speak Spanish and so would enjoy these meals in ignorant bliss, smiling winningly as I guzzled down pork, rice and beans. I tried not to ask my now-wife to translate because I didn’t want to interrupt what I imagined were hugely erudite discussions; she’s a literary professor and her parents are both philosophers. Slowly, though, I began to understand, Spanish revealing itself like a song on the wind.

Liberalism has always considered itself a noble creed, as liberals have conceived themselves its knights in shining armor. Perhaps – once upon a time – it was so. But that was in the 18th and 19th centuries, and we are now living in an era when liberals have many fears: climate change, fascism, malefactors of great wealth (as Theodore Roosevelt called them), nativists, white men, Republicans, Donald Trump. Indeed, they are frightened of so many things that I have written a book ennumerating them – a book that so far remains unpublished, perhaps because the liberal publishers fear its argument, too. Still, having observed them for so many years, I am convinced that what liberals fear above all else is one another.