Why Liberalism Failed

✍ Scribed by Deneen, Patrick J

• Book ID: 110011159
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 153 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780300223446

✦ Synopsis

Has liberalism failed because it has succeeded?

Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth 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.