Liberalism can't go on its own accord. It's not a self sufficient body of ideas that doesn't require a lot of tributary sources, he says. We've got the highest stanro living you could argue in human history and yet we're very alienated from each other according to him. He thinks there is something like an animal longing for transcendent spiritual being but also our increasing refusal to ask ourselves what does it mean to be free?
Richard Reinsch, editor of Law and Liberty and the host of the podcast Liberty Law Talk, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the Enlightenment. Topics discussed include the search for meaning, the stability of liberalism, the rise of populism, and Solzhenitsyn's indictment of Western values from his Harvard Commencement Address of 1978.