His argument is divided into two parts. The first assesses the state of contemporary liberal thought; the second offers his own “civic” alternative. Spragens groups theorists of liberalism into four broad schools, each characterized by a tendency to mistake a central but partial truth for the whole. Thus, “Liberal Realists”—a motley group that includes Hobbes, Rorty, and Shklar—teach us to respect the sober and somewhat fragile achievements of security and civil peace, which safeguard us from our worst fears but neglect our best hopes. “Libertarians” stress moral reality and integrity of individual lives and the economic and political benefits of a market economy but exaggerate the absolutism of self-ownership as well as the tendency for government regulation to set us on “the road to serfdom.” “Liberal Egalitarians”—Rawls and company—remind us of the role of chance in the allocation and development of natural talent, but fail to take seriously our separateness as distinct and morally responsible individuals. “Difference Liberals,” such as William Connolly and Iris Young, properly warn of the tendency of dominant groups to “naturalize” and “privilege” contingent differences, thereby threatening the ideals of liberty and equality, but they themselves privilege and so encourage overstated claims of oppression, thereby facilitating the balkanization of political life.

In light of the success and failures of these other models, Spragens offers in Part Two his “civic” alternative. As befits a liberal theory, liberty and equality retain their central place, but neither is conceived as a goal to be maximized. Instead, liberty is restated as “autonomy,” a “constitutive” and “threshold” good, that puts together the “positive” and “negative” dimensions of liberty that Isaiah Berlin misleadingly sundered. Equality is restated as a “moral postulate” that recognizes our distinctively human capacities for rational self-direction and moral judgment as well as an instrumental good that facilitates other aspects of civic liberalism. In politics, it seeks a substantive equality of influence. In economics, it competes with the need for incentives and the moral claims of individual desert, presumptive self-ownership, and beneficence among family and friends.

Important as are these restatements of liberty and equality, what gives civic liberalism its most distinctive character is its emphasis on civic friendship and virtue. Friendship, of course, is not a distinctively liberal ideal and, for many theorists, is an ideal that is not even compatible with liberalism. Rejecting Aristotle's account of friendship in favor of that of C. S. Lewis, Spragens places less emphasis on the essential goodness of friends than on their “common affection for an object that they do not embody but rather appreciate” (p. 202)—whether that be pushpin or poetry—and by lowering the bar, he seeks to render friendship complementary to liberalism's ideals of autonomy and equality. Furthermore, by fostering goodwill and trust and thus greater capacity for social action, friendship, he argues, is conducive to limited government, toleration, deliberation, and compromise. Friendship combines with equality to place renewed emphasis on public venues—public libraries, parks, zoos, museums, festivals, and schools. And it moderates autonomy to preserve their civic atmosphere and purpose; so schools need not tolerate disruptive students, libraries can throw out the drunks, and museums can insist on decorum.

There is much to admire in this work: its criticisms are incisive, but balanced; its restatement of liberal ideals is nuanced, mindful of the trade-offs among political goods, persuasive, and well moored in the moral intuitions underlying liberal practice; its spirit is generous, though tough-minded; its style is clear, lively, and friendly. Indeed the work exemplifies many of the ideals that civic liberalism extols.

Despite his rhetorical effort to stay within the liberal tradition, it might be more accurate, however, to understand Spragens' work as a synthesis of liberalism and republicanism. And it is important to note that the republican tradition on which he draws is “horizontal” rather than “vertical,” that is, its morality derives more from equality than excellence. Accordingly, his work is not altogether immune from the risks of the former or mindful of its need for the latter. In extending equality in politics from the formal equality of voting to substantial equality of influence, he casually endorses restrictions on political speech (or at least spending on political speech), ignoring the empirical literature on the limited independent impact of money and neglecting the warnings from Madison's Federalist Ten on the threat of such egalitarian impulses to the “first object” of liberal government. One must wonder then how well civic liberalism would safeguard freedom of speech against other contemporary lateral pressures such as the feminist attack against what it calls pornography (i.e., whatever has the effect of subordinating women) or the politically correct attack against “insensitive” speech on college campuses. The “vertical,” or perfectionist, strand of liberal republicanism, in contrast, by differentiating types of freedom and holding speech higher than mere expression, allows for the restriction of obscenity and vulgarity without threatening political speech or the pursuit of wisdom. Despite its relation to his project and independent importance, however, Spragens gives perfectionist liberalism comparatively little attention. More emphatically than most liberal theories, civic liberalism does stress the importance of virtue in the citizenry. But virtue becomes an instrumental good serving the ends of autonomy, equality, and friendship, not the embodiment of human excellence. Jimmy Stewart and Charles Kuralt, not Socrates or Lincoln, are its exemplars.

Civic liberalism would bring us a polity better suited for the human spirit than any of the four models Spragens criticizes. It would underwrite a centrist approach to a range of policies—welfare, social security, health care, and immigration—with substantial support in the polity but championed by neither left nor right. It would restore a civil society of vibrant voluntary organizations. And it would support a vital public realm of “effective public schools, accommodating public spaces, inviting public parks, accessible public libraries, and fiscally viable public hospitals” (p. 258). Perhaps it is too much to ask of a liberal theory that it also be inspiring.