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It would not be hard to write an essay that treats The Cat in the Hat as a fable for the United States in the age of President Donald Trump. An unpredictable and charismatic figure in a trademark red and white hat (the Cat) blasts onto the stage, upending the unwritten rules of decorum with his wild antics to the simultaneous delight and befuddlement of his constituency ("Sally and I") all while hectoring nay-sayers (the fish) fret and declare that this is quite irregular and should not be tolerated until things get out of hand and order is reestablished, but not without a sneaking sense that allowing this to have happened at all is a frightening transgression ("Now, what should we do? What would you do if your mother asked you?"). Thankfully, one of America's most influential experimental writers already did it for us, in 1968, when Robert Coover published The Cat in the Hat for President: A Political Fable.

This article offers an interpretation of Vladimir Nabokov's unique contribution to political theory as seen primarily through the lens of his novel Invitation to a Beheading. Although most frequently interpreted as an indictment of totalitarianism, the novel depicts a form of cruelty practiced not only by totalitarians, but also by the rulers and citizens of milder political orders, including liberalism. The novel suggests that such cruelty is more insidious than that familiar to readers of dystopian novels precisely because of its universality. This article demonstrates that Nabokov's contribution to liberalism may be found in the surprising coherence between his aesthetic principles and his art, both of which critique the imposition of "general ideas" on either persons or books. What emerges is a picture of aesthetic liberalism in which Nabokov's model for the ideal liberal citizen is neither the sensitive artist nor the apolitical aesthete, but rather the careful reader.