Why Liberalism Failed - by Patrick Deneen - Book Review
Why Liberalism Failed – it has a certain finality to it, doesn’t it? Deneen’s book not so much an elegy as an autopsy. The thrust of the book is that the pathologies associated with modern liberalism (job displacement due to globalization, loneliness, loss of morals, declining trust of institutions, wealth inequality, geographic polarization of the classes, etc.) are not due to a failure of liberalism but to its success.
That is, the liberal project (which transcends modern left and right, as I discuss below), started in earnest philosophically by Locke and politically by Jefferson and Madison, has finally achieved the individualism on which it was built. His central claim is that liberalism failed because it succeeded. Locke’s hypothetical state of nature, while divorced from reality when he (and Hobbes) devised it, has increasingly become the reality in which we live, because we built political structures based on the assumption that it existed. By building a philosophy based on the idea that individual freedom, of all kinds and for its own sake, was the highest good, we have achieved a world where we have great individual freedom but very little fulfillment.
Liberalism is based on a false assumption about human nature, individualism, and now, 250 years later, the cracks are beginning to show. The gap between liberalism’s promises and reality has widened enough that it has created the populist movements we now see on both sides of the political aisle. Deneen views his task as to examine the dead system that we now live in, defined by these pathologies, and understand some the root causes – while outlining a system that is more in accord with human nature.
The most perplexing thought in the book is Deneen’s claim that the political structure affects the character of the citizens. I’ve always conceived the Founding as parallel tracks: one the one hand, maximum political freedom, and in the other, a thick set of institutions, mainly family and church, that teach people to curb their appetites. The political freedoms granted to early Americans allowed them to establish towns and live freely in the new world, while attempting to build their city on the hill – the kingdom of God in the new world.
How did this go wrong? When did the twin pillars of personal freedom and religious morality lost balance? Deneen’s claim is that the liberal political philosophy worked as a philosophical Gresham’s law (bad money drives out good), where political freedom translated, in the hearts and minds, into a justification for moral freedom of all types. For example, he mentions the “freedoms” to conquer nature with impunity (which he traces back to Bacon), to act with disregard for the past and future (in opposition to ideas of generational commitments), and to disregard the religion of your forefathers. The resulting vacuum of authority of intermediate institutions is filled by the State. Thus anything that is strictly speaking ‘legal’ is moral in the modern world. And anything immoral in the modern culture, like the ever-present specter of racism, must be illegal. Hobbes’ state of nature, in which the only two institutions are the individual and the State, is thus manifested. The two institutions of individualism and statism exist symbiotically. Economic freedom, taken to the extreme, justifies any number of immoral activities like prostitution and abortion, and contributes to social decay. This social decay results in failing intermediate institutions, and a growing State.
Another central claim of the book is Deneen’s definition of liberalism. His claim is that the “poison pill” of liberalism is a redefinition of freedom. Leaving behind classical and Christian notions of freedom as virtue, the liberal philosophy defines freedom as “do what thou wilt”. It is the overarching philosophy of both the American left and right wing. Conservatives value economic freedom, or classical liberalism, of the individual. They support global markets, free trade, and free immigration. While failing to conserve any social morality, conservatives have succeeded in the globalist economic project. The left, or progressive liberals, value social freedom, or licentiousness. The progressive left has been successful, to say the least, in their project to change social norms regarding marriage, sexuality, and other moral values. Thus liberalism, as defined by Deneen, is the project of individual freedom at the expense of nature, time, and place – and has largely succeeded in creating a global marketplace defined by personal freedom. The ashes of family, church, town, and neighborhood are merely collateral damage.
If you feel like the West has lost something in the last several decades, but don’t know what to call it, Deneen would call it culture. He defines culture as “a set of generational customs, practices, and rituals that are grounded in local and particular settings.” The key words in that definition are “generational” and “local”. Real culture involves commitments to the past and future, and to your local place. Thus institutions like the traditional family and the local church revolve around relationships to generations both older and younger than oneself. These institutions create authentic community, and, Deneen argues, help teach us to be virtuous.
The globalist, liberal project, by contrast promotes an “anticulture” (Deneen’s word). By defining individual human freedom as the highest good without regard for nature, time, or place, generational cultural practices are replaced with lowest common denominator consumerism and “tolerance” of sin as the only observable “culture” we have left. Because global consumerism and non-judgement emphasize the individual at the expense of the common good of the community, the conquest of nature in the pursuit of pleasure, and immediate gratification at the expense of the future – they do not represent a true culture, but an anticulture, the absence of culture. Thus, to the degree we participate in this anticulture – by redefining our attitudes to its whims, we lose our culture, and thus become less human.
Deneen offers several solutions to this dynamic, some of which take massive political will of the ruling class (any legislative changes would go in this category). The long term project he envisions is a government that keeps the common good in mind (a nebulous concept, I know). This government would support family, church, town, and other forms of culture at the expense of the globalist project. This would likely include changes to tax law, trade policy, and possibly architecture. But the solutions that are most pertinent to the individual are perhaps more important.
I propose we, as individuals, recognize the anitculture that we live in, and opt out. We need to swim upstream, something Christians have not done a good enough job of, to create culture. Family, church, neighborhood, and town, are just some of the institutions we need to support. As the middle class is continually squeezed out by globalization, we can protect ourselves from despair and hardship by renewing our commitment to those around us, and to those closest to us. Political solutions take time, and are uncertain, but we all have choices to make today to support virtue and honor God in the way we relate to one another. While liberalism remains the anticulture of the world, we can, and should, choose to build local communities focused on generational commitments to each other.
Deneen’s book forces the reader to think outside of the left-right spectrum, and thus is illuminating. It is an enlightening cultural commentary and political analysis that compels the reader to think deeply about his own contribution to culture – for good or evil.