RealClearPolicy Newsletters: Original Articles
Has Liberalism Really Failed?
Dear Reader —
Liberalism has failed because it has succeeded. Such is the provocative thesis of Patrick Deneen’s latest book “Why Liberalism Failed.” It was also the topic of an event hosted by the Trinity Forum and Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy at the National Press Club Monday night, featuring remarks by Deneen and a response by David Brooks, followed by a discussion.
Liberalism has failed, Deneen thinks, because its promise of progress has proved illusory. Rather than limited government and equality, we have witnessed rising inequality and an ever-expanding state. Left behind in the wake of liberal ‘progress’ is “the lost world of unchosen relationships … a world defined not by rights but by obligations.” This is not because liberalism has been imperfectly applied, but because liberalism has been perfectly applied. Taking a cue from Tocqueville, Deneen believes that liberalism contains within itself the seeds of its own decay.
The reason for this inevitable failure is that liberalism rests on a “false anthropology of the human person.” It construes man as fully autonomous, the ideal expression of which is self-determination — independence from all external compulsion whether from human relationships, obligations, or the limits imposed on us by nature. In fact, though, we are not fully autonomous agents, but embodied creatures enmeshed in relationships and communities imbued with values that transcend our immediate sphere of control. Our freedom is always freedom within a moral community — freedom toward the good, not freedom from constraint. No surprise, then, that liberalism’s attempt to remake reality after its false image of the human person winds up in failure.
Brooks offered a very different answer to the question “Has liberalism failed?” Not only does he think it has not, he believes liberalism is the right and only prescription for what ails our society. While it is true that our country has become “a home of isolation … a breakdown of social connection, a breakdown of relationship, I wouldn’t say that’s caused by liberalism. I’d say that’s caused by individualism, and it’s not the same thing.” Individualism, according to Brooks, is an extreme form of liberalism. And “all good ideas become false when they get taken to their extreme.”
Brooks also began his remarks with an anthropology of the human person, albeit a very different one. “The most important quality of our consciousness is our desiring heart, that we’re primarily desiring creatures and loving creatures.” The second most important? “The yearning soul,” which “yearns for higher and higher levels of happiness and joy.” These two features of the human person together push us “to build a society in which the desires of the heart and yearning of the soul are fulfilled and those moments when they are fulfilled are moments of ecstatic moral joy.” Such is liberal democracy.
Brooks agrees with Deneen that our society is marked by a breakdown of community. But that is not liberalism’s fault. On the contrary, “liberalism is the system that incites people to live in community.” Brooks also agrees that individualism is a “myth we tell ourselves.” But it is not liberalism’s myth. “If you look at American history, this great emblem of liberal democracy, we are community makers.” Our country is a plurality of such communities, however embattled, united by a common commitment to “this great liberal democratic creed … a belief in something that ennobles human beings.”
There is something to admire in both these contrasting views of liberalism. But what is striking is how much they share. They pinpoint the same societal afflictions, even if they disagree about their cause and remedy. And they also both assume a surprisingly — and implausibly — capacious concept of liberalism.
Liberalism, in Deneen’s hands, is responsible for almost all that ails modern society, while for Brooks it is almost salvific. (He calls it, echoing Lincoln, our “last best hope.”) Moreover, both seem to accept Brooks’ claim that “America is the ultimate expression of liberalism.”
But America is surely much more than that, liberalism much less. Liberalism is a particular ideology associated with certain figures of the Enlightenment and their latter-day heirs, including many Americans. But as Christopher Lasch observed, some historians and social critics differentiate between this and “the Atlantic tradition of republicanism or civic humanism,” which has roots extending all the way back to the ancients and was “historically an important competitor of the liberal tradition.”
Unlike liberalism, republicanism does not see man as an isolated individual but as a citizen of a polis — a member of a particular moral community. But even this distinction is too neat, according to Lasch. American history, including many of its great figures, is an unholy mix of liberalism, republicanism, civic humanism, popular movements, and various religious traditions — all committed to the experiment of self-government.
Rather than seeing liberalism as a totalizing force for destruction or liberation, Lasch reminds us that it is only one strain within our idiosyncratic political tradition — one that contains within it the resources for both political freedom and moral resistance to the excesses of liberalism.
These are some of the many issues lately taken up at RealClearPolicy. Below you will find just a few highlights.
— M. Anthony Mills, editor | RealClearPolicy
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Five Facts You Need to Know About Congressional Retirements. The bipartisan group No Labels offers this overview.
Three Ideas for Budget Process Reform. James C. Capretta hails the creation of a Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform to examine ideas for fixing the federal budget process.
Accreditors Must Stop Letting Failing Colleges Off the Hook. In RealClearEducation, Antoinette Flores contends that a lack of accountability allows college accreditors to avoid addressing many of the hardest problems facing higher ed.
The Neglected Challenges of Rural Education. Also in RealClearEducation, Will Flanders highlights research showing that many rural schools are struggling.
Meeting the Cyber Skills Gap. In RealClearPolitics, I explore the challenge underpinning efforts to provide digital safeguards: finding and training people to do the job.
EPA Finally Takes “Fishbowl” Approach to Regulation. Dan Byers applauds the agency’s effort to bring more transparency to the rulemaking process.
On Unicorns and Prescription Prices. In RealClearHealth, Jerry Rogers contends that lowering drug prices provides a rare opportunity for bipartisan action.
Drilling Plan Is Good for Consumers — and the Environment. In RealClearEnergy, Ross Marchand argues that critics of the administration’s off-shore drilling plan miss the mark.
Great Britain Offers Cautionary Tale on Single Payer. Also in RealClearHealth, Deane Waldman asserts that the stories of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans show the dangers of government-controlled health care.
A Carbon Tax Would Kill Coal and Harm the Middle Class. Chuck DeVore makes his case in our pages.
