Op-Ed: Ross Douthat's "The Crisis for Liberalism"
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Ross Douthat
The 2016 campaign was a crisis for conservatism; its aftermath is a crisis for liberalism. The left, delivered unexpectedly to impotence, has no choice but to start arguing about how it lost its way. Much of post-1960s liberal politics... has been an experiment in cutting Western societies loose from those foundations, set to the tune of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” No heaven or religion, no countries or borders or parochial loyalties of any kind.... Unfortunately the values of “Imagine” are simply not sufficient to the needs of human life. People have a desire for solidarity that cosmopolitanism does not satisfy, immaterial interests that redistribution cannot meet, a yearning for the sacred that secularism cannot answer. So where religion atrophies, family weakens and patriotism ebbs, other forms of group identity inevitably assert themselves. [link]
By Ross Douthat
The 2016 campaign was a crisis for conservatism; its aftermath is a crisis for liberalism. The left, delivered unexpectedly to impotence, has no choice but to start arguing about how it lost its way. Much of post-1960s liberal politics... has been an experiment in cutting Western societies loose from those foundations, set to the tune of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” No heaven or religion, no countries or borders or parochial loyalties of any kind.... Unfortunately the values of “Imagine” are simply not sufficient to the needs of human life. People have a desire for solidarity that cosmopolitanism does not satisfy, immaterial interests that redistribution cannot meet, a yearning for the sacred that secularism cannot answer. So where religion atrophies, family weakens and patriotism ebbs, other forms of group identity inevitably assert themselves. [link]