American Breakdown

For more than a decade, the tradition of liberalism has taken a beating from both ends of the political spectrum. Some of the blows have been inflicted by a right that has outgrown its fidelity to democratic values and constitutional procedures. Others have come from a left that has jettisoned civic nationalism in favor of a peculiar obsession with group identity. Separately and together, these tendencies have bred a Manichean worldview among vast swathes of the American public. Bemoaning the ascendancy of illiberalism is a cottage industry, and the bemoaners are too often absolutist in their own right, insisting that tribalism infects their political and ideological rivals while disputing that any such tribalism grips their own side. Scarcely anyone stands apart from the mob and takes the full measure of the grotesque beast in our midst.