Liberal democracy is under threat. Commentators and intellectuals of all stripes are by now generally agreed on this point. But they disagree about the nature of the foe that looms over it. For some, it's anti-democratic strongmen like Vladimir Putin and even Donald Trump. For others, it's the gradual cession of democratic power to unaccountable bureaucracies like the European Union and our own administrative state. Still others wonder if capitalism and its addling technology and media have rendered citizens incapable of democratic debate and self-government.
Patrick Deneen, professor of political science at Notre Dame, takes a bolder position in “Why Liberalism Failed,” an early contribution to this literature and one that has generated a lot of debate. Liberalism is not falling, according to Deneen, but has already fallen; and it was felled not by some external enemy, but by its own “inner logic.”
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