Should liberalism die?

Have excessive individualism and freedom eroded the values about which we should really care? And if so, should liberalism be replaced with a more community-oriented political ideology?

Written by Bo Winegard

PHILO: Liberalism is not dead. But it is plagued by an underlying and likely fatal disease. Unlike many intellectuals, I do not lament this. And if liberalism perishes, I will not grieve. In fact, I will celebrate.

For too long, we have praised liberalism. We have deferred to liberalism We have even worshipped liberalism. In a secular age, it has become our religion, our sacred narrative, whose patriarchs are Locke and Smith and Jefferson. This sacred narrative has fettered our mind and enslaved our imagination, persuading us that the highest goods in life are freedom and individualism and that all other political arrangements, all deviations from democratic liberalism, are despotic and illegitimate.

The death of liberalism will liberate us from the tyranny of liberalism. It will allow us to think more carefully and creatively about society and individualism, autonomy and order, meaning and malaise. And perhaps we will, as we reflect upon these complicated issues, recognize that there is more to life than abstract freedom, more to life than crass consumerism, hedonism, and the unceasing pursuit of the latest gadgets and gewgaws. And we will see that radical individualism, by rejecting the legitimacy of the collective, leads inevitably to disorder, decadence, and pervasive ennui.