A World after Liberalism Quotes

“Their grasp of American political history, to say nothing of their knowledge of Western culture, reflected the appalling state of general literacy.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“Politically, the ideal state is authoritarian, basing its legitimacy on submission to authority, rather than popular consent.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“They wondered if Christian moral teachings, long assumed to be a source of moral order, might actually be a source of social decadence.4”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“What connected the welfare state, feminism, employment protections, school reform, and liberal internationalism? Francis’s undeviating answer was that they serve managerial power through a leveling process of “homogenization.” They ensured that consumers had the same tastes, businesses operated in the same markets, students received the same training, and citizens held the same values.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“Organizations formerly rooted in local relationships, family ties, and regional cultures became exponentially larger, more impersonal, and more standardized.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“Pareto was one of the first scholars of ideology, and he carefully examined discrepancies between the abstract content of political rhetoric and its real-world uses.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“They did so by unmasking appearances—by showing that behind the impressive façade of Western life hid deeply unflattering truths. Its artistic and political traditions were not the expression of a unique aspiration for beauty and excellence. They were products of the most common drives for mammon and sex.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“He values the absolute over the contingent, the invisible over the visible, the sacred over the profane, and being over becoming.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“the world has been slouching into spiritual poverty since the eighth century BC, when the world of Tradition began to disappear, just as historical consciousness began to dawn.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“the purpose of philosophy is not to acquire theoretical knowledge at all. Its purpose is radical self-transformation—it is to transform a student into a self-directed rather than an other-directed person, into a being who can create and control their own reality, rather than being conditioned by it.9”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“To read the book rightly as a (white) European was to realize that one is part of a culture to which one belongs exclusively and which belongs exclusively to them.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“For Spengler, cultures were perceptual frameworks for understanding and interacting with the world.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“Your identity does not belong to you alone. It joins you forever to those of your kind, and separates you forever from those who are alien. To know and to affirm this inheritance is to live a meaningful life; to deny it is the greatest tragedy; to be denied it the greatest injustice.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“It held that as a moral vision of life, liberalism was evil. Not only in practice, where its understanding of human nature encouraged hedonism, selfishness, and mediocrity. Liberalism is evil in principle because it destroys the foundations of social order. It obscures the central moral distinction, which is not between right and wrong, but between civilization and barbarism.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“They feared the West was trapped in a civilizational crisis, amounting to a kind of death wish, that it perversely forbade anybody to identify, let alone attempt to solve.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“They argued that human life had been debased by political ideologies that aimed at nothing higher than the peaceful resolution of conflict and the efficient management of consumption.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

“After meeting Hitler on July 25 in Bayreuth, Spengler was reported to have remarked, “When one sits across from him, one does not have even one single time the feeling that he is significant.” John Farrenkopf, Prophet of Decline: Spengler on World History and Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), pg. 237.”
― Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right