Tyranny of Liberalism

The Tyranny of Liberalism:  Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command  by James Kalb, 290 pages

This is a book about liberalism, the guiding principle of post-Enlightenment politics, rather than about the political left.  Kalb's argument is that liberalism, the dominant ideology of the western world for the past 200 years, is itself in a state of crisis.  He claims that the ideals of tolerance and value-neutral institutions dissolve the traditional bonds that create communities, rejecting them as inherently restrictive and irrational.  This inevitably leads to a society made up of isolated individuals being managed by technocratic elites, whether corporate or governmental, because only the market and scientistic bureaucracy are viewed as objective and, therefore, rational.  This, in turn, must turn oppressive, because such a society is deeply dysfunctional.

Kalb argues that by banishing transcendental meaning to the realm of the private, modernity has removed everything that makes healthy social life possible, which, in turn, is what makes life humanly satisfying.  Only a society founded on and guided by a common culture and tradition - though not necessarily an unreflective tradition - can provide the values that make life worth living.  Kalb also presents suggestions for growing and conserving such a culture (for a living tradition must be grown, it cannot be designed).  An excellent work in the now sadly neglected tradition of thoughtful conservatives such as Russell Kirk and Christopher Dawson.