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THIS ARTICLE STATES THAT JOHN GRAY'S (A CHAMPION OF CLASSICAL LIBERAL THOUGHT) RECENT CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM, AND HIS CASE FOR AN APPARENTLY RELATIVISTIC "POST-PYRRHONIAN" POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, ARE SHOWN TO BE WANTING. WEAKNESSES IN GRAY'S CRITIQUE ARE IDENTIFIED AND DISCUSSED: THE CHARACTERIZATION OF LIBERALISM AS UNIVERSALLY PRESCRIPTIVE CONFUSION, ABOUT WHETHER LIBERALISM IS A GENUINE TRADITION, AND MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE RELATION BETWEEN CONDUCT AND THE VALUE OF FREEDOM. A FORMULATION OF LIBERALISM THAT IS NOT UNIVERSALIST ("TEMPERATE" LIBERALISM) IS OFFERED, AND IT IS SHOWN THAT ONE OF LIBERALISM'S VITAL CONCERNS--CONTROLLING POLITICAL POWER IN ORDER TO PROTECT FREEDOM--IS A HIATUS IN GRAY'S THEORY.

Liberalism will survive this crisis, as it has many others, but it will have changed. The felt need to ensure the security of the economy, and the threats posed to the social order by individuals with potentially threatening capabilities, will require more and more surveillance of our everyday lives and more and more of our participation in those processes of 'keeping an eye out' for anonymous parcels, suspicious behaviours, provocative speech and dangerous thoughts. We will all be enlisted in the Army of Observation, free to choose but self-regulating in our choices. Everyone will watch everyone, and the new age of opto-liberalism will have dawned.