style="overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">Liberalism is one of those concepts that seems clear-cut, until we try to define it. It is easier to come to terms with on a comparative rather than an absolute basis. Gorbachev was clearly a more liberal ruler of Russia than Stalin. More parochially, Westminster was a more liberal school than Eton in the immediate postwar decades.