
Why Liberalism Failed
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Brian Holsopple
Has liberalism failed because it has succeeded?
Of the three dominant ideologies of the 20th century - fascism, communism, and liberalism - only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism's proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: It trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history.
Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.
©2018 Patrick J. Deneen (P)2018 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...




















People who viewed this also viewed...


















A Paean to a Better Future
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
What is attempted in this book is grandiose. It is to convince the reader that all the modern ills of the world stem not from neoliberalism, progressivism or any other -ism that can be traced back a few decades or a century, but from design flaws deep within liberalism itself. Which liberalism, you may wonder. The very liberalism that is at the base of all western modern democratic countries. It should be mentioned at this point that, although this book attacks the Liberal world order it mostly describes modern America and is written very much from a contemporary American conservative perspective.
The arguments used are a mixture of traditionally socialist anti-capitalist points (alienation, atomisation, loss of community, consumerism, self-interest of the elites, GDP-growth-worship), a large dose of reactionary conservatism (cultural pessimism, moral panic, disregarding progress, importance of virtue), and a pinch of environmentalism (acknowledgement and fear of climate change). At its most interesting, the book brings all of these together and urges swift action for the sake of the future. Yet, when it comes down to telling us how, the way forward, according to the author, is, essentially, becoming virtuous communitarian Christians who read the Great Books of the western canon.
You might think I am exaggerating. Well... No. I really am not. The Catholicism of the author severely restricts his horizon and his political imagination. The final chapter of the book reads like a manifesto that calls good people to action. It encourages the formation of a post-liberal political paradigm. Yet, given how things have been presented up to that point, the author seems to wish much more for a pre-liberal world where his values would go uncontested.
If I am so unimpressed with this book's conclusion, why 3 stars?
It is an interesting window into the mind of a sophisticated conservative thinker who isn't afraid to criticize the market as much as he does the state. This is a refreshing approach that is worth anyone's time. Especially since the text is very accessible. That said, his grand theory, which equates rampant capitalism, technocratic managerial statism and excessive individualism with liberalism, is, however, so grand that it implodes under its own weight.
An Attempt at a Revolutionary Diagnosis
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Contradictions we feel...
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Interesting Identification of the Problem...
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Must Read!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Thickening & humbling
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Brilliant book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Hey, that's where John Doyle got that from!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Interesting take on recent political trends but...
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The water we swim in
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.