Why Liberalism Failed

1. Liberalism's Success in Being Himself Has Led to Its Failure.

Liberalism has failed—not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself. It has failed because it has succeeded.

The core paradox. Liberalism, conceived centuries ago and implemented in the U.S., was a wager that society could be based on rights-bearing individuals pursuing their own good life with limited government and free markets. By all accounts, this wager was wildly successful, spreading globally and defeating competing ideologies like fascism and communism. Yet, today, signs of deep crisis are everywhere:

• Declining public trust in institutions
• Growing cynicism towards politics and elites
• Widening gaps between rich and poor, faithful and secular

Shattered promises. The very promises of liberalism have been broken as it became "more fully itself." The state expands uncontrollably, individual rights are increasingly insecure for those without wealth, and the economy favors a "meritocracy" that perpetuates advantage. The gap between liberalism's claims and reality fuels doubt, not trust.

Pathologies of success. The ruins we see are not evidence of failing to live up to liberal ideals, but signs of its success. Liberalism, intended to foster equity, pluralism, dignity, and liberty, instead generates titanic inequality, enforces uniformity, fosters degradation, and undermines freedom. Applying more liberal measures to fix these ills is like adding fuel to a fire.

2. Liberalism Operates as an Insidious, Invisible Ideology.

What’s most insidious about the cave that we occupy is that its walls are like the backdrops of old movie sets, promising seemingly endless vistas without constraints or limits, and thus our containment remains invisible to us.

Beyond politics. Liberalism is more than just a political system; it's an encompassing ecosystem, the first political architecture to propose transforming all aspects of human life to conform to a preconceived plan. Unlike visibly authoritarian ideologies, liberalism pretends neutrality, denying any intention of shaping souls under its rule. It makes itself invisible, like a computer's operating system.

Remaking the world. Liberalism surreptitiously remakes the world in its image, inviting easy liberties, pleasure, and wealth. Its ideological nature becomes visible only as its deformations become too obvious to ignore. Like Plato's cave, we inhabit a reality shaped by this ideology, often unaware of its constraints because they promise endless freedom.

Ideology's failure. Ideology ultimately fails because it's based on falsehoods about human nature, leading to a growing gap between its claims and lived experience. As this gap widens, the regime loses legitimacy, either enforcing conformity to a lie or collapsing from loss of belief. Liberalism's vision of liberty increasingly feels like a taunt, trapping humanity in the very apparatus meant to grant freedom.

3. Liberalism Rests on False Assumptions About Human Nature and Liberty.

Liberalism is most fundamentally constituted by a pair of deeper anthropological assumptions that give liberal institutions a particular orientation and cast: 1) anthropological individualism and the voluntarist conception of choice, and 2) human separation from and opposition to nature.

Two core revolutions. Liberalism is animated by two foundational beliefs that radically redefine liberty and human nature. The first is anthropological individualism and the voluntarist conception of choice, positing humans as radically independent, autonomous, and nonrelational by nature. Legitimacy, including political bonds, family ties, and affiliations, becomes dependent on individual choice based on rational self-interest.

War against nature. The second assumption is human separation from and opposition to nature. Premodern thought saw humans as part of a natural order with a fixed telos, requiring self-limitation and virtue. Liberalism rejects this, seeking mastery over nature through science and economics, and later applying this conquest to human nature itself, viewing it as plastic and alterable.

Undermining foundations. These assumptions displace preliberal understandings of liberty as self-rule through virtue and reliance on reinforcing social norms. Liberalism's ascent required sustained efforts to undermine classical and Christian views, redefining concepts and colonizing institutions with fundamentally different anthropological premises. This break, while often presented as natural development, was a revolutionary reconception.

4. Liberalism's Core Wager: Liberty as Absence of Constraint.

Liberalism instead understands liberty as the condition in which one can act freely within the sphere unconstrained by positive law.

Redefining freedom. Premodern traditions understood liberty as the learned capacity for self-rule, conquering base desires through virtue and discipline. It was an art achieved through habituation and education, essential for both individual souls and polities aiming for the common good. Doing as one wished was seen as slavery to appetite.

Absence of limits. Modern liberalism rejects this, defining liberty as the condition of being free to pursue whatever is desired, limited only by law. The "state of nature" is imagined as pure liberty, with constraint as its opposite. Government becomes an external limitation, not a discipline for self-governance.

Expanding the sphere. The goal is to expand the sphere of autonomous activity as much as possible. This requires liberation from established authority, arbitrary culture, tradition, and the limits of nature. Ironically, the more this sphere of autonomy is secured, the more comprehensive the state must become to regulate behavior no longer governed by social norms.

5. Individualism and Statism Mutually Reinforce Each Other Under Liberalism.

Statism enables individualism, individualism demands statism.

A false dichotomy. Modern politics often presents a battle between individual liberty (classical liberalism) and state power/equality (progressive liberalism). However, these apparently contrary positions mask a deeper cooperation: both advance the expansion of individualism and statism at the expense of vital, lived relationships and mediating institutions.

Philosophical roots. Classical liberalism, via social contract theory, posits individuals creating a limited state. Yet, in practice, the liberal state "creates" the individual by providing conditions for expanding liberty (pursuit of appetites) through law and mastery over nature. Progressive liberalism, while criticizing classical individualism, also seeks to liberate individuals from unchosen relationships and traditions, often using state power to achieve this "higher" individuality.

Practical consequences. This joint project strengthens both state power and individualism. As individuals are liberated from traditional ties (family, community, church), they lose traditional sources of support and turn to the state in times of need. The more individuated the populace, the more likely they are to rely on the state, increasing its power. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle where state expansion secures individual fragmentation, requiring further state expansion to control a society without shared norms.

6. Liberalism Creates an Anticulture by Destroying Nature, Time, and Place.

The only forms of shared cultural “liturgy” that remain are celebrations of the liberal state and the liberal market.

Eviceration of culture. Liberalism replaces particular cultures, grounded in local settings and generational customs, with a pervasive anticulture. This anticulture rests on three pillars:

• Conquest of nature: Nature becomes an object to be mastered, detached from culture.
• Fractured time: Experience of time becomes a pastless present, indifferent to future.
• Fungible place: Place loses definitional meaning, becoming interchangeable.

Standardization and homogenization. This anticulture advances through standardizing law replacing informal norms and a universal market creating a monoculture. It frees individuals from specific people and embedded relationships, replacing custom with abstract law and personal obligations with legal threats and financial debt.

Bondage, not liberty. This anticulture, supposedly the arena of liberty, is increasingly perceived as bondage. The simultaneous joy and anxiety of liberated humanity, shorn of tradition, reflect liberalism's success and failure. The empire of liberty grows, but the reality of liberty recedes, accelerating liberalism's demise.

7. Technology, Shaped by Liberalism, Reinforces Powerlessness and Inevitability.

Whether told as praise or lament, this narrative of inevitability tends to grant autonomy to technology itself, as if its advances occurred independently of human intention and thought.

Technological age. While humans have always used tools, modern times are defined by a new relationship with technology, marked by oscillation between optimism and terror. Popular culture reflects this, increasingly depicting technology as the source of our doom or bondage.

Technology shapes us. Academic studies explore how technology, like the internet and social media, changes us, often for the worse, impacting our brains, social lives, and capacity for community. Critics argue technology attacks culture, replacing tradition with utility and efficiency, leading to a "technopoly" where technology is the culture.

Inevitability narrative. A pervasive sense of technological inevitability dominates, as if advances follow an iron law independent of human intention. This narrative grants autonomy to technology, making us feel powerless before its transformative power. However, technology is shaped by underlying political and social norms; liberalism's definition of liberty as expanding autonomous activity is the "operating system" that fosters our technological society.

8. Liberal Education is Replaced by Servile Training for the Market and State.

An education fitting for a res publica is replaced with an education suited for a res idiotica—in the Greek, a “private” and isolated person.

Undermining cultivation. Before liberalism, education was deeply tied to culture, cultivating free persons through engagement with tradition and texts, aiming for liberty as self-governance through virtue. Liberalism undermines this by detaching education from culture, making it an engine of anticulture and replacing the goal of self-governance with autonomy and absence of constraint.

Servile arts. Liberal arts, once aimed at educating free human beings, are displaced by subjects focused on practical application, economic relevance, and technical mastery (STEM, business). The humanities, struggling for relevance, often turn against the texts they study, adopting progressive theories that prioritize liberation and identity politics over cultural inheritance.

Loss of limits. This shift reflects liberalism's assumption that we are born free, rather than needing to learn freedom. Education becomes about personal liberation and advancing autonomy, aligning with the scientific project of mastering nature. Students increasingly feel they have no choice but to pursue practical majors, leading to the decline of humanities and an education focused on private, isolated ends rather than civic or human flourishing.

9. Liberalism Has Created a New, More Permanent Aristocracy.

Liberalism’s denouement is a society of deep, pervasive stratification, a condition that liberals lament even as they contribute in manifold ways to its perpetuation—particularly through its educational institutions.

Displacing the old. Liberalism gained support by attacking the old aristocracy based on inherited privilege, promising openness based on choice and talent. However, it has resulted in a new aristocracy enjoying inherited privileges, prescribed roles, and fixed positions, based on meritocracy, wealth, and control of institutions.

Locke's wager. Locke's foundational text proposed a system ruled by the "industrious and rational," replacing the "querulous and contentious" aristocracy. He argued this new order, while creating pervasive inequality, would increase overall wealth, making inequality bearable through material prosperity and the theoretical possibility of mobility. This was liberalism's fundamental wager.

Rule of the strong. Today's society is deeply stratified, with economic winners congregating in wealthy areas and losers left behind. The educational system, particularly elite institutions, acts as a tool for culling and preparing students for this new ruling class, perpetuating the divide. This condition is not an aberration but a fulfillment of liberalism's design, organizing society for the benefit of the strong and extraordinary, often at the expense of the ordinary.

10. Liberal Democracy Degrades Citizenship by Prioritizing Private Ends.

Thus liberalism abandons the pervasive challenge of democracy as a regime requiring the cultivation of disciplined self-rule in favor of viewing the government as a separate if beneficent entity that supports limitless provision of material goods and untrammeled expansion of private identity.

Constraining the people. While "liberal democracy" is the dominant regime form, liberalism constrains democracy. It claims legitimacy through consent and managed elections but institutes structures to dissipate democratic energy and ensure rule by elites. When democratic majorities reject liberal tenets, elites often denounce democracy itself.

Antidemocratic roots. The U.S. system was designed as a republic, not a democracy, explicitly seeking to avoid the perceived dangers of direct popular rule. The Framers aimed to "refine and enlarge" public views through representation and "extend the sphere" to discourage civic combination and activity, promoting privatism.

Private over public. Liberalism fosters a populace shaped by individual interest and private ends. The government's legitimacy derives from expanding "the empire of liberty" – rights, power, wealth, and expressive individualism. As long as this expansion occurs, the absence of active democratic self-rule is acceptable. Citizenship becomes degraded, focused on supporting a distant government that guarantees private pursuits rather than engaging in local self-governance or pursuing a common good.

11. The Path Forward Requires Liberation From Liberalism Itself.

The only path to liberation from the inevitabilities and ungovernable forces that liberalism imposes is liberation from liberalism itself.

Beyond more liberalism. The ailments of liberal society cannot be fixed by applying more liberalism. Both main political options today – progressivism and conservatism – are different sides of the same coin, advancing liberalism's project. Neither offers a real alternative or can restore what liberalism has depleted.

No simple return. While the past instructs, there can be no simple return or restoration. Liberalism has drawn down material and moral resources it cannot replenish. Moving beyond liberalism doesn't mean discarding core Western longings for liberty and dignity, but rejecting liberalism's false turn: its ideological remaking of the world based on a false anthropology.

Local resistance. A better course involves smaller, local forms of resistance and practice, building resilient new cultures against liberalism's anticulture. This means fostering community, care, self-sacrifice, and small-scale democracy. It requires doing "more honor to ourselves" by cultivating better selves, invested in the fate of others, leading to better practices and potentially a better theory than failing liberalism.

Last updated: May 22, 2025