Think a society can thrive and flourish on liberal principles alone? Think again. That’s the message Assumption College political scientist Daniel J. Mahoney sends in his recent book The Conservative Foundations of a Liberal Order.
Mahoney begins his work with a quote from Michael Polanyi, emphasizing the need for a “conscious reaffirmation of traditional continuity,” then explains how Western societies have strayed from that concept.
Rather than hearkening to Polanyi’s call to fortify liberty on the foundations of civilized order, the Western world — and first and foremost its intellectual class — has more and more turned to an idea of “pure democracy” that has little or no place for the crucial historical, political, spiritual, and cultural prerequisites of the liberal order. I call them the “conservative foundations of the liberal order” to highlight that “the conscious reaffirmation of traditional continuity” is the indispensable precondition for sustaining the liberty and dignity of human beings under the conditions of modernity. The reduction of a liberty to a vague and empty affirmation of equality and individual and collective autonomy is inevitably destructive of those “contents of life” — religion, patriotism, philosophical reflection, family ties or bonds, prudent statesmanship — that enrich human existence and give meaning and purpose to human freedom.
Of course, the suggestion that the intellectual class is apt to get things wrong is nothing new.
