This week, Patrick J. Deneen, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and author of Why Liberalism Failed, debates Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, an American Enterprise Institute fellow and author of Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy. We are exceedingly proud to present a Debate between two such prominent spokesmen for their respective positions.
Josh Hammer, Newsweek opinion editor, is also a syndicated columnist and of counsel at First Liberty Institute.
While people differ about how to define American liberalism, there is a broad consensus to begin with the Declaration of Independence. Human beings are endowed with rights—or certain spheres of liberty that can be neither “alienated” nor abridged. These include “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Governments are founded to “secure” these rights. Echoing the Enlightenment-era arguments of the Englishman John Locke, humans are by nature “free and independent”; think of them in a “state of nature,” able to do and choose what they wish. According to such a view of the social contract, we create governments that limit some rights so that we may fully enjoy others. It is a philosophy that stresses our individual freedom, and it defines the purpose of any public life as advancing our individuality.
Now, of course, what we mean by Liberalism here is not progressivism, woke-ism, or anything else your typical right-wing radio host—or left-wing MSNBC host—means by liberalism. That’s why, for clarity’s sake, I’ll use a capital “L” for the Liberalism we associate with John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume and aspects of the various social transformations that fall under the all-too-capacious catchall label, “the Enlightenment.” (There were many Enlightenments—English, Scottish, French, American and even German—and not all of their contributions were equal or necessarily positive. But I’ll use the catchall term regardless, for the sake of simplicity.)
