Opinions about America have taken a decisive turn in the early part
of the 21st century. Some 70% of Americans believe that the country
is moving in the wrong direction, and half the country thinks that
its best days are behind it. Most believe that their children will
be less prosperous and have fewer opportunities than previous
generations. Evident to all is that the political system is broken
and social fabric is fraying, particularly as a growing gap between
wealthy haves and left-behind have-nots increases, a hostile divide
widens between faithful and secular, and deep disagreement persists
over America's role in the world. Wealthy Americans continue to
build gated enclaves in and around select cities where they
congregate, while growing numbers of Christians compare our times
to those of the late Roman empire, and ponder a fundamental
withdrawal from wider American society into updated forms of
Benedictine monastic communities. The signs of the times suggest
that much is wrong with America. This collection of thematic essays
by Notre Dame political theorist and public intellectual Patrick
Deneen addresses the questions, is there something worth conserving
in America, and if so, is America capable of conservation? Can a
nation founded in a revolutionary moment that led to the founding
of the first liberal nation be thought capable of sustaining and
passing on virtues and practices that ennoble? Or is America
inherently a nation that idolizes the new over the old, license
over ordered liberty, and hedonism over self-rule? Can America
conserve what is worth keeping for it to remain-or even become-a
Republic? Noting the discontent with the left/right categories that
dominate public discussion and define the American political
imaginary, Deneen examines a variety of political, social, and
cultural themes as means of renewal. While American conservatives
tend to view a return to glory requiring a return to Constitutional
principles, Deneen regards "present discontents" as arising in
significant part due to the realization of, rather than deviation
from, the basic liberal principles embedded in the American
Constitutional order. America's strengths have arisen not from its
theory, but from its historical practice, which served as leaven
and a fundamental corrective to its mistaken theories of liberal
individualism and economistic materialism. And while American
progressives regard the solution to this philosophy lying in a
statist and collectivist vision of national community, Deneen
argues that this conclusion only grows out of, and ultimately
reinforces, the individualism of our official philosophy. The
essays together propose an integrated vision of "another America,"
one that seeks above all a renewal of practices of community, local
identity, civic attentiveness, cultural variety, and religious
flourishing as the underpinnings of a flourishing republic. Guided
especially throughout by the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville,
Deneen calls for a deepening of the "arts of association" and a
renewal of the connection between "the spirit of liberty" and "the
spirit of religion." Based upon lectures originally delivered to
audiences of college students, the book is accessible and free of
academic jargon, seeking rather to connect intimately with thinking
citizens who want to know what's wrong with America.
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