Why Liberalism Failed

One of the things that makes Deneen’s thesis open to widespread critical engagement is that it largely transcends contemporary political categories, especially those found in the United States in the 21st century. In American politics, there are essentially only two mainstream political parties—Democrat and Republican—and they are typically divided along predictable and long-established ideological lines that are seldom, if ever, crossed.

Deneen’s work in Why Liberalism Failed argues that any viewpoint that sees one of these sides as promoting a liberal agenda while the other directly opposes it is misguided. Instead, he asserts that liberalism is the foundational paradigm for the entire American project. Most works engaging in contemporary politics will fall into one of the two prevailing camps, thus opening themselves up to criticism from the opposing side along bipartisan lines. Deneen’s text takes a different ideological approach: It has attracted criticism from all sides and all political affiliations by critiquing the very core of American politics, criticizing the liberal ideology upon which most modern democratic regimes are based.

For instance, from a post-liberal perspective—the category that most accurately describes Deneen’s school of thought—both major political parties are aligned in centering individual freedom in opposition to a classical sense of the common good.