March 15, 2018
How to Confront a Crisis of Cultural Confidence
By Peter BerkowitzIn his new book, Leon Kass shows Americans how to honor the benefits of liberal democracy, including individual freedom and human equality, while recognizing their high costs.
Dark forebodings about the future of liberal democracy in America are agitating left and right these days.
On the left, respected figures encourage fears that the end of days is drawing near for the American experiment in self-government. The culprit: Donald Trump’s war—limited only by incompetence and emotional incontinence—on individual rights, the rule of law, and democratic norms.
On the right, some eminent men and women agree that Trump presents a uniquely toxic political threat and must be resisted intransigently. Others, farther to the right, take a longer and grimmer view, seeing Trump not as a cause but as a symptom of an already fatally flawed enterprise. Liberal democracy in America, according to them, inevitably generates isolated individuals, enfeebled families, and withered communities; a working life of grinding drudgery, preening ambition, insatiable greed; an educational system that inculcates ignorance, narcissism, and self-righteousness; and a degrading popular culture that radiates hostility to honor, nobility, and holiness.