Book Review: Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick J. Deneen
Liberalism has failed because liberalism has succeeded.
Liberalism has failed because liberalism has succeeded. That's the thesis of Professor Deneen's book. At its foundation, liberalism redefined the term "liberty." The traditional, Christian conception of liberty was the condition of self-governance. To achieve self-governance and forestall tyranny, individuals had to be inculcated with virtues---such as wisdom, moderation, morality, sacrifice, patience, temperance, and justice---that restrained self-serving appetites, desires, tyrannical temptation, and absolute power-seeking. Education in the classic texts and liberal arts was seen as essential ways to cultivate such virtues. Families, communities, churches, and local groups were further seen as a way to constrain the innate human instincts for unlimited appetites, domination, and tyranny. Humans were fallible and subjected to the laws of nature---and needed the right values to achieve self-rule, combat tyranny, and be free.
Liberalism redefined liberty as unrestrained individual autonomy free of what it saw as old, paternalistic constrains on individuals. Traditional norms and social structures that would foster virtue and self-control were seen as oppressive, arbitrary, out-of-date, and limiting "progress." Liberalism sought to conquer nature---not to be constrained by it or live in harmony with it. Paradoxically, completely autonomous individuals cannot exist in nature---they must be constrained somehow. Otherwise, in a free for all, your freedoms might infringe on other people's freedoms. Consequently, unrestrained individualism requires statism. Liberalism empowers the state to set the rules of behavior in a society---as liberalism destroys the traditional communal groups that traditionally set norms constraining individuals and preventing anarchy. As Deneen writes, "statism enables individualism; individualism demands statism." Liberalism replaces informal societal customs with the full force of law that set the guidelines for behavior that previously were ingrained in individuals by way of education in virtue and norms. Liberalism supplants voluntarism---while paradoxically claiming to enhance it.
"In this [liberal] world, gratitude to the past and obligations to the future are replaced by a nearly universal pursuit of immediate gratification: culture, rather than imparting the wisdom and experience of the past so as to cultivate virtues of self-restraint and civility, becomes synonymous with hedonic titillation, visceral crudeness, and distraction, all oriented toward promoting consumption, appetite, and detachment. As a result, superficially self-maximizing, socially destructive behaviors begin to dominate society."
The first step in an American revival is to redefine liberty back to its original meaning. Liberalism is unsustainable. We cannot have an ever more encompassing state controlling autonomous individuals. Nor can we have the unsatiable appetites in a world of limits without running out of natural resources. People will rebel and anarchy will ensue. If we continue on this current path of a bigger and bigger state, we risk the possibility of ushering in a totalitarian state---fascism or communism---in America. Some argue we're already there.
Both modern day "conservatives" and "liberals" are both liberals in a traditional sense. Conservatives, typically Republicans, are classical liberals. Neoliberals, Democrats, are progressive liberals. Both political parties are two sides of the same coin of liberalism. Conservatives defend individualism. Neoliberals defend statism. But liberalism advances both. You cannot have autonomous individuals---unconstrained by virtue and self-discipline---without increasing the power of the state.
Liberalism replaces traditional culture---local, specific, and generational customs, practices, beliefs, and rituals---with an "anti-culture" predicated on the conquest of nature, timelessness---in which the present is elevated above the oppressive past and intangible future (i.e., living in moment, past and future don't matter), and borderlessness---the elimination of any meaning or constrains of place. These three pillars of culture---nature, time, place---together with the liberal law (legalism) and the liberal market (globalization) replace cultural norms rooted in local neighborhoods with a liberal anti-culture ("pop-culture" or "media culture" or "multiculturalism") bereft of meaning, purpose, and any constraint on individual autonomy. For liberalism, in order to liberate the individual, we must be unconstrained by nature, time, and place.
In the process of destruction of tradition, liberalism redefines citizens as consumers and employees. It creates a new aristocracy that's devoid of any obligations to their fellow man and the less fortunate, destroys communities, focuses on abstraction, creates conformity and homogeneity (limits particularity, variety, and diversity), centralizes control, and constructs a monoculture. Individuals become fungible and replaceable consumers and robots in the service of the liberal market and liberal legal structures (legalism). Liberal legalism replaces our natural liberty. Liberalism destroys social norms and customs and replaces them with legal rules and the bureaucracy. In so doing, liberalism is incapable of fostering self-government, breaks down sexual and economic norms---and leads to consumption, unrestrained appetites, hedonism, and shallow and short-term thinking. Liberalism places no limits on behavior and destroys the family. Families are replaced with a paternalistic state (what Thomas Hobbs would call the Leviathan). Liberalism doesn't liberate. It puts individuals under the authority of this Leviathan (or the administrative state) and the technocracy. Liberalism leads to powerlessness and bondage. Technologies that were supposed to liberate us and advance progress are actually making us slaves of these same technologies because this "culture of technology" was premised on liberalism's newly defined liberty.
Fully autonomous individuals lead to anarchy. Anarchy must be prevented via the administrative state because liberalism destroys virtue, self-rule, social norms and customs, communities, and constrains on the individual that were traditionally enacted precisely to keep us free. All the problems facing America today---the financial crisis, inflation, crime, open borders, transgenderism, climate alarmism, techno-fascism, unaccountable "deep state," subversion of citizenship, globalization and loss of jobs, breakdown of families and morality, government dependence, wokeness, engineered viruses and global pandemics, etc.---arise from the failure of liberalism (i.e., paradoxically, liberalism's achievement).
In the traditional definition, liberty isn't something we're born with. To be free, requires effort, sacrifice, habituation, self-control, training, and education. That was the purpose of education---particularly in the liberal arts---to make us free. Liberty requires a long process of learning using reason and logic---to instill values that effectuate self-governance and to foster a free person and a free citizen. The liberal arts made us free. In contrast, slavery was defined as a condition of doing anything one wants because that was seen as putting our basest appetites ahead of doing what was right. In other words, liberty as defined by liberalism was understood to be slavery in the traditional view. Hence, in the modern era, the destruction of liberal arts and of the university follows directly from liberalism redefining liberty. The liberal arts have been replaced with women's studies, queer studies, and other identity based examinations that preach the degradation of virtue and self-restraint, and the conquest of nature. Liberal education is replaced with servile education. Education came to be credentialing for the purposes of serving the military-industrial complex, corporations, the free market, progressive ideology, and the administrative state. Instead of cultivating tradition and learning about the classics, tradition and classics became "oppressive," outdated, and incongruent with progress. Rationality and logic were replaced with poststructuralism and postmodernism. Nature was to be mastered---not accepted as God's creation. Biology and sex became "socially constructed." Progress meant to eschew traditional education---and to "create knowledge" that diminished traditional beliefs and proved their "backwardness."
Liberalism leads to enslavement because humans are insatiable and the world has limits. No matter how much wealth and power one has it's never enough. Liberation from all constrains is an illusion. To achieve liberty, we must be satisfied by attainment---not yearn for more. America's crises of the past decade are liberalism's creation. In a finite world, unlimited consumption and lack of virtue lead to disaster. We need to restore the classical liberal arts education in order to achieve true liberty---liberty from enslavement to our appetites and depletion of the world.
Liberalism creates a new aristocracy that has nothing in common with the working man. The society is stratified into elites and everybody else. The elites are credentialed; connected to other elites (but disconnected from working people); embrace identity politics, social justice, and diversity; and espouse liberal social values such as abortion, climate change, and transgenderism. In this way, liberalism creates a fake society in which elites virtue-signal to the masses---while perpetuating their own privilege without actually helping the less fortunate. The ruling class espouses values that they themselves don't practice. Diversity is great for you but for me. Abortion for all but not for my daughter. Legalized weed for thee but not for me. Teen sex is great for your kids but not for my children. They're for open borders and illegal immigration but not where they live---as Ron DeSantis recently demonstrated when he flew illegals to Martha's Vineyard. They claim to support public education and teachers’ unions but send their kids to private school. And so on.
Elites congregate, hire, eat, sleep, and hang out with other elites. The country bifurcates into the haves and have nots. Ironically, one of liberalism's aims was to eliminate the old aristocracy. But it created a new aristocracy that in some ways is more powerful, insidious, and unjust than the old. Liberal "justice" created liberal injustice. Liberalism promised equality but paradoxically delivered inequality. Liberal elites enjoy the privileges of a new aristocracy even as they deny those privileges exist. Liberalism espouses the "noble lie" that elites aren't elites at all---but just like everybody else.
The formation of this new aristocracy gives elites overwhelming influence in government and business---thereby watering down democracy and popular control---and creating an "anti-democracy." Citizenship wanes. And the citizen is replaced by a faceless consumer. In the current liberal discourse, we talk a lot about consumers---protecting consumer, consumer confidence, etc.---and not about citizens. Citizenship requires virtue, social capital, and working for the common good---not an autonomous, unconstrained individual that liberalism hoists above all else. In the rejection of the past and in the ignorance of the future, the "presentism" of liberalism creates a civic disaster that liberals say can only be cured by more liberalism. This creates a vicious cycle that destroys civic institutions---precisely those institutions needed for a healthy democracy.
Liberalism has failed because liberalism has succeeded. The "noble lie" of liberalism has been exposed. The liberal elites---the hollow elite as the great Charles Murray calls them---continue to deny their privilege and virtue-signal with a veneer of social justice in the name of self-interest and self-preservation while the working class suffers. Previous ruling classes knew they were rich and privileged and acted like it. They understood they had a duty to help the less fortunate and to pass down the traits and behaviors that made them succeed because when everybody succeeds America succeeds. Modern liberal elites pretend they are victims and sufferers of great injustices while accumulating more and more wealth and power at the expense of everybody else. And all of that power is used to suppress, control, and neuter the voices and rights of the working class. All of the economic and social crises of recent years are a direct result of the liberal order in which virtue, self-control, social capital, love for your neighbor, respect for the past, and the concern for the future are destroyed for more consumption, greed, and power in the present. This leads to inequality, and a breakdown of democracy. Eventually the populace will think it has no other choice but to overthrow the elites in a violent revolution. We hope that doesn't happen. And that's not the country you or your children would want to live in.
To prevent the worst case outcome, Deneen calls for a new regime of reform liberalism---eschewing liberalism's worse tendencies while recognizing its achievements. Instead of truly liberating people, liberalism simply changed the bondage. For example, from the bondage of a king to a bondage of corporate America. In order to restore liberty, we need to rebuild virtue, community, self-reliance, and civic life that resist the abstraction and depersonalization of liberalism---while keeping the tradition of liberty, equality, dignity, justice, and constitutionalism. We don't want to go back to a preliberal age---we want to fix liberalism. This new, postliberal order must start a new counter-culture---counter-liberal-anticulture, to be more precise---that, through local communities, restores families, seeks true diversity---not the fake diversity of liberalism, inculcates civic participation, and appreciates the limits of nature. The path to a better tomorrow begins in local settings, a new culture, virtue, belief in common humanity, and self-rule. Together, we can restore true liberty again.