In Chapter 4, I compared Rousseau to Charles Taylor and showed that Rousseau, who is so often regarded as a powerful but unsound advance guard for communitarianism, can be effectively deployed against at least one important and influential version of it. But, of course, Rousseau is best known as a critic of liberalism, or at least of liberal political theory. The more moderate Rousseau who has emerged in this book presents at least a somewhat different problem for liberals than the bipolar extremist he seeks to replace. As I have already noted, there is a way in which the extremist Rousseau buttresses the case for liberalism by showing that the case against it, when it is thought through by a great thinker, has consequences that today's critics of liberalism cannot stomach. It seems to me that the liberal reader of Rousseau is in part right to see Rousseau's thought as a weapon to wield against today's soft anti-liberals. Even the Rousseau described in these pages is too radical for them and makes the project of resolving the problems he identifies seem all but impossibly difficult and, within the context of large, modern states, plain impossibly difficult. However, even if it were true that Rousseau has nothing useful to say to residents – he does not usually let us say citizens – of such states, defenders of liberalism would need to respond to his assault on their way of life.