Why Liberalism Failed

by Patrick J. Deneen

One of globalization’s cheerleaders, Thomas Friedman, has defined it in just such terms of inevitability: It is the inevitable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before—in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before and in a way that is enabling the world to reach into individuals, corporations and nation-states farther, faster, deeper, cheaper than ever before.2 Whether people want the world “reaching into” individuals, corporations, and nation states is not a matter for discussion, for the process cannot be stopped. The economic system that simultaneously is both liberalism’s handmaiden and its engine, like a Frankenstein monster, takes on a life of its own, and its processes and logic can no longer be controlled by people purportedly enjoying the greatest freedom in history. The wages of freedom are bondage to economic inevitability.