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Patrick J. Deneen

Patrick J. Deneen is a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and author, most recently, of Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future (Sentinel, 2023).
Articles by Patrick J. Deneen

Liberalism against Itself

Samuel Moyn’s latest book, Liberalism against Itself, begins and ends by invoking my 2018 book, Why Liberalism Failed. Moyn employs my book as a bookend in order to refute its thesis: “liberalism failed because it has succeeded.” Moyn seeks to counter, in effect, “liberal­ism has failed until now because it hasn’t really been tried.” In spite of a fundamentally opposite view of how to understand the current travails of the liberal order, Moyn and I, and our respective books, share a good deal in common…

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A Tyranny without Tyrants?

Sandel is among the few thinkers who warn fellow elites that the very system that has afforded them prestige, material comfort, and the tools to survive, and even thrive, amid economic and social instability has given rise to pervasive political discontent and lies at the root of the recent populist backlash against elites. He notes that liberal and center-left political parties—once the champions of the working class—have become the home of the meritocrats, and hence the party of the new aristocracy. Liberal-left parties have developed a self-serving obliviousness to their complicity in creating the threat to their own position…

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