The crisis of liberalism The origin and destiny of freedom

The Crisis of Liberalism The Cold War struggle against Soviet communism has ended, but a new struggle – a struggle within liberal democracy itself – has taken its place. Contemporary liberalism is in a critical situation. But most advanced thinkers misdiagnose the problem. Few people realize that liberalism, like any other ideology, suffers from tensions and contradictions that threaten it from within. While malignant actors attack liberalism from abroad, the real conflict, full of contradictory freedoms and individualities, has turned into something resembling a liberal civil war. Liberals today struggle to maintain cohesion within the party and to effectively communicate their value proposition to voters. A large part of the problem is that the origin of liberalism and the key assumptions about human freedom that fueled it have been obscured or forgotten over time. In “The Crisis of Liberalism,” Michael R. J. Bonner suggests that a renewed understanding of freedom—its philosophical and theological foundations—can point a way out of the current mess and give voters and liberal advocates generally a deeper understanding of what they are fighting for.