The Crisis of Liberalism

The Cold War struggle against Soviet communism is over, but a new conflict ― one within liberal democracy itself ― has taken its place.

Contemporary liberalism is in a bad way. But most advanced thinkers misdiagnose the problem. Few can see that liberalism, like any other ideology, suffers from tensions and contradictions that threaten it from within.

While malign actors attack liberalism from the outside, the real conflict, full of antithetical freedoms and individualities, has turned into a kind of liberal civil war. Liberals today struggle to maintain cohesiveness within the party and to effectively communicate their value proposition to voters. A large part of the problem is that the origin of liberalism and the main assumptions about human freedom that nourished it have been obscured or forgotten over time.

In The Crisis of Liberalism, Michael R.J. Bonner proposes that a renewed understanding of freedom ― its philosophical and theological foundations ― can point the way out of the present mess and give voters and liberal adherents overall a stronger understanding of what they’re fighting for.