Why Liberalism Failed is the most important book I've read this year.

Is the state responsible for making regulations to prevent police brutality? How do we address systemic injustices? Are masks infringing on people's freedoms? As the past several months have shown, there is something problematic about the way America is run, something inevitable about its downward spiral towards chaos.

And this is exactly what Patrick Deneen predicts will happen in America and other liberal "democracies." The problem, as Deneen puts it, is in the operating system itself: liberalism cannot deliver what it promises because it is untenable.

Once upon a time, "Liberty" meant freedom from the passions which enslave us. Now, however, it has come to mean libertarian autonomy, as in "I'm free to do whatever the hell I want and it's my right to do so." This redefinition of freedom will naturally lead to a society which comes to disdain any sense of "binding" traditions or values. If freedom is defined as autonomy, then community rules and regulations will merely devolve into "oppressive" structures preventing the individual from becoming "free." Take the church's definition of marriage, for example, which is a covenant between a man and a woman (or a sacrament given by God), mirroring the image of Christ and his church, and we can already see how this is deemed as problematic and oppressive by those outside the church.

So what we are to do with religious rules and regulations, the culturally-constructed cages we've built for ourselves? Many progressives suggest using the state to dismantle oppressive institutions, especially those which stand against sexual autonomy. Tell the church to redefine marriage, or else. Many conservatives, on the other hand, (Deneen calls them "classical liberals") suggest that the state will only lead to more restrictions; it is the free market alone which guarantees individual autonomy.

Thus, Deneen points out, the war between progressives and conservatives merely reflect two sides of the same coin. Although they both agree that humans need to be autonomous, they disagree regarding the means. But what do you get when your society is built on the premise that no one has any duties or obligations to one's neighbor but should do whatever the hell he wants? : "Taken to its logical conclusion, liberalism's end game is unsustainable in every respect: it cannot perpetually enforce order upon a collection of autonomous individuals increasingly shorn of constitutive social norms, nor can it provide endless material growth in a world of limits."

Although the majority of Why Liberalism Failed is spent bemoaning liberalism's destruction of culture, education, morality, and community, Deneen fairly notes that liberalism has brought enormous wealth and wellbeing to people all over the world. Still, he encourage his readers to consider liberalism's alternatives, to sanctify it by recognizing how interconnected we are to our neighbors. He upholds the importance of self-governance and the centrality of virtues for sustaining a just society.