For a book that’s ostensibly about the oppressively liberal American political system, a surprising number of pages are devoted to the ins and outs of what happens on elite college campuses ... The confidence (and condescension) is breathtaking ... Deneen’s worldview is unrelentingly zero-sum ... Underneath all the gemütlich verbs lurks a suggestion that some readers may find chilling: a vision of the "common good" so obvious to Deneen that it’s not up for debate or discussion.
Despite his weakness for abstraction and overstatement, [Deneen] is a serious historian of ideas ... So what if anything comes after liberalism? This is where Deneen’s argument becomes incoherent. He is strong on rhetoric, but weak on policy prescriptions and for a conservative can sound alarmingly like a revolutionary ... If for him liberalism is the god that failed, he also remains hopeful, yet ultimately cannot explain how the transformative politics he seeks will come into effect.
Deneen’s disregard for details, among them the awkward fact that no one actually defends the position he attributes to practically everyone, is unfortunately characteristic. The post-liberals are dramatic, even hysterical, stylists, prone to sweeping pronouncements about the entirety of culture since the dawn of time ... The uninitiated might wonder whether Deneen should have consulted a single ambassador of 'the many' before making so many confident assertions about 'what most ordinary people instinctively seek' ... Deneen makes it easy to turn away from his politics of personality and his terminological indignities.
The newer book contains all the faults of Why Liberalism Failed but adds one: dishonesty ... Regime Change, unlike Why Liberalism Failed, appears to be written exclusively for people who already agree with its contentions. Rarely does Mr. Deneen anticipate a counterargument. Caricatures abound ... Mr. Deneen’s habit of misrepresenting beliefs he dislikes doesn’t prevent him from borrowing from them when the need arises.
Apparently considers himself a victim of liberal persecution compelled to practice the art of circumlocution in the name of his 'truth.' And while the book has received a great deal of attention for its appeal to a new brand of right-wing politicians like Josh Hawley and J. D. Vance, it is particularly dangerous in the way that some of the most reactionary aspects of Deneen’s argument might appeal to people who don’t think of themselves as conservative ... An important and much-advertised public intervention whose ideas pose significant danger to liberal democracy in large part because they have the potential to be taken seriously by many people who should know better ... Deneen’s book radically rejects liberal democracy and subtly—if not entirely coherently—defends reactionary ends achieved through Machiavellian means ... Did Deneen support the January 6 coup attempt? His book doesn’t say. Does Deneen support violence in the streets? His book doesn’t say ... What it rationalizes is a reactionary present that deserves to be consigned to the past.
The theme throughout the book is that things were simply better before liberalism reared its ugly head ... Particularly frustrating here is Deneen’s praise for the Puritan leader John Winthrop ... Despite Deneen’s claims to be proposing a "new" regime, there is little in his work that offers a genuine departure—though its reminder that the Enlightenment was not so neutral as it seems is salutary enough.
It’s unfortunate that one of the examples of family-friendly, birth-rate–promoting government that Deneen holds up is the far-right Orban regime of Hungary. It’s even more unfortunate that the conservatism it upholds is a counter to the "ethos of cosmopolitanism," that last term being a historic antisemitic dog whistle, whether Deneen intends it that way or not ... Just the thing for those who use the word woke without knowing what it means.
