Summary
Patrick J. Deneen: Why Liberalism Fails
Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century - fascism, communism and liberalism - only the last remains. This has created an unusual situation in which proponents of liberalism 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 promoting unparalleled material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, but it discourages civic obligations in favor of privatization; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it led to the most far-reaching, most comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers a stark warning that the centripetal forces now operating on our political culture are not superficial flaws, but inherent features of a system whose success generates its own failure.
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