Is liberalism a dead end, Patrick Deneen?

Today's guest is Patrick Deneen, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and one of the most debated thinkers of our time. His book Why Liberalism Failed (Yale university press 2018) made waves in intellectual circles—not because it predicted the collapse of liberalism, but because it argued that liberalism has already won. And that’s precisely why it has failed.

Deneen’s analysis transcends the traditional left-right divide. He argues that both camps have actually worked together to realize liberalism’s grand project: freeing the individual from all traditional bonds. The right has done it through the market, the left through the state—and together they have dismantled the very communities that once held societies together. Family, local communities, religion—everything has been sacrificed on the altar of individual liberation.

In Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future (Sentinel 2023), he deepens his critique. He describes today’s elite as a technocratic aristocracy—a class that speaks of equality but ultimately serves only its own interests. Here, he draws inspiration from Christopher Lasch, who described how modern elites have isolated themselves from the people while seeing themselves as humanity’s great liberators. According to Deneen, this new aristocracy has created a society where ordinary people have less and less say, even as we continue calling it a democracy.

But what is the alternative? Deneen does not argue for a return to the old elite or a new meritocracy—on the contrary, he sees meritocracy itself as a central part of the problem. Instead, he envisions a leadership class deeply rooted in society, one that is not exclusively drawn from universities and metropolitan expert culture but from the very communities that liberalism has sought to dissolve.

Is this a conservative dream, a populist revolt, or a realistic path forward? We discuss Deneen’s ideas, how his critique challenges both the right and the left—and what might come after the liberal era.

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