"Liberalism" has long been a contested term in our politics, but now a deep discourse is developing that blames liberalism, classical and modern, as a fundamental culprit in our rabid politics, unbound individualism, economic inequality, environmental degradation, deprivations of key liberties, and just all-around irrationality that grips our public discourse. The gifted Patrick Deneen informs us in his new book Why Liberalism Failed, reviewed in this space by Fred Bauer, that “as liberalism has ‘become more fully itself,' as its inner logic has become more evident and its self-contradictions manifest, it has generated pathologies that are at once deformations of its claims yet realizations of liberal ideology.”
Liberalism's aim was to defend pluralism, protect dignity, and expand freedom for “rights-bearing individuals.” However, the practical results, Deneen argues, have been the exact opposite: “titanic inequality,” “uniformity,” “material and spiritual degradation,” and the contraction of freedom. Deneen's critique combines classical and modern liberalism, as both consume social, moral, and religious authorities and replenish nothing. All take and no give, that's liberalism, one giant mooch. We are now naked and afraid, but highly autonomous, under liberalism's flashing neon sign.
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