I mean it as a political operating system of the west, the United States, britain, europe. , europe. The political philosophy done that gave rise to our constitutional order. The governments role and protecting those rights if you have a more libertarian view or making it possible for you to have the full enjoyment of those rights if you have a more progressive view. The purpose is to provide liberty and protect liberty. This very purpose in this very end is undermined to protect and give rise to. We will into that. Ten both democrat, republicans, conservatives, do they do they all consider themselves to be liberal democrats to their extent . What we think of as our political spectrum is basically rightleaning liberals and leftleaning liberals or has been until very recent times. What we have seen in the west is largely a debate within the frame of liberalism. We are entering an age where that may be coming to an end. You write that liberalism has failed, now because it has failed short, but because it , true to itself. Explain that. In many ways, underlies the early philosophy of thinkers like john locke or jon stewart mill. This project of freeing people, in many ways has succeeded. Icople are more free of each other and more free of the kinds of institutions in which human life once it was essential to a flourishing life. We think of this not only in terms of Robert Putnam writing about rolling alone, our liberation from associations, our religion from religion, whatever pretty inheritance we may have as a matter of tradition or custom. Some family from marriage or each other and in many ways liberal democracy seems to be, it may be, and i think it has been the case, it requires those kinds of institutions that help us train informs us stability stability. Forms of dialogue. How to disagree with one another in some ways it marks the success of liberalism. It also marks its failures. Its crisis. You write that part of liberal democracys goal was to get rid of the old social order so we have built a new social order. In many ways, that social order is meant to replace a lot of those older institutions that i just mentioned. In one sense, it has has done that. It has done that through the expansion of the modern state. Replaces a lot of the institutions one use to rely on. When you fall short, they might lift you up. Your neighborhood, your church, your church, your family. In other respects, the institutions of the state or of the Global Market are impersonal. They are depersonalized forces. We are freer than ever before, but we also feel more alone than ever before. These institutions that are supposed to help us are not the institutions that we can rely upon or trust. These institutions that are supposed to foster and support us in this time of freedom. 7488200 if you lived in the east and central time zones. 8201 if you live in the mountain and pacific time zones and want to talk to notre dame professor about why liberalism failed. We can also take your social media comment that book tv for tefacebook, twitter and instagr. Email is book tv at cspan. Org. In your book you write that the narrowing of our political risings come i want you to explain that, has rendered us incapable of considering that what we face today is not a set of discrete problems solvable by liberal tools but a systemic challenge arising from pervasive invisible ideology. There is a lot packed into that sentence. Did i write that . Now it captures exactly what i am talking about. The narrowing of our political horizon, until recent history, the way we have reviewed the span of debate between a liberal right and a liberal left. Whether that is libertarian economics against more libertarian social form, the defense of the individual freedom especially in personal life, sexual life and so forth so that we really divided the world a tween two kinds of liberalism. One is a special place to the market. One is to the state. In many ways, what this debate has ledie us to believe is this spans the possible views of what should constitute normal politics. Since i publish the book, it seems that all of those bets are off. We are seeing a frame of reference outside of that. What had been the settled debate within the frame. Now what is being debated as the frame itself. I am spending this semester in london. The debates taking place in europe with the rise of populism. Trump here inni the united stats all indicates that within the liberal democracies there is a question of whether or not the liberal assumptions are themselves viable. Selfgovernment is ailing. You could say that. One of the things that liberalism did not support was the conception of selfgovernment. The freedom of individuals from each other. That makes selfgoverning in common. Exceedingly difficult. A chapter in the book in which i argue that liberalism and democracy ultimately part ways. To pursue and do as the self wants to do makes it very difficult for that human being to be a civic self. Someone who is engaged in the art of selfgovernment in common with other citizens. When you talk about freedom from self, please explain that. The freedom of the self, really. Fundamentally malleable. Requiring therefore reshaping of, not just our political order, but the whole of society to support that project of self making. Not only government, but the the institutions shaping education, our technology in many ways. The self making self. This makes it increasingly difficult for us to think about embedded and related as part of a common civic framework. Is it a natural transition, do do you think . Or is it abnormal . We are at the end of an experiment. This is a, relatively new invention. It gets it starts in the United States. We are in the middle of a kind of experiment. We will discover things as we go along. One of the things that we are discovering now is maybe like so many of the world political systems, they have an expiration date. Where do we go from here . That is is the big question. If we are aware of some of the causes creating temporary forms of crisis, we may have to rethink the fundamental assumption of what we are as human beings. I think that that is happening in the discussion of our environment. Completely self making features in the natural world, a world world with limits, i think is beginning to call on us to shape those assumptions. This will also have to be the case we think about ourselves in relationship to other human beings. Chair of the Constitutional Studies Department at notre dame. He served as u. S. Information agency as well during the clinton administration. Do you come at this from a democratic point of view . I come at this from a trans partisan view. Really, in my site, in many ways has been kind of the comment thread that is defined both of our Political Parties for the last halfcentury or so. As a result, roughly, half of my audience loves my book and half of my audience hates my book. Erey also love and hate the other half that the other side doesnt like. Theres something in this book for everyone and something that will be a bit discomforting to people in all Political Parties today. One of the people that has endorsed it is cornell west. That is correct. Maybe one of the only people with an endorsement from cornell west. One of the most conservative bishops in the church. President obama gave it a shout out about six months after its was published. I think it is found in the audience in which people find the current political organizations, the settlement of our parties is not really addressing where we are today. Should we read in anything of the fact that it was published tree years into the Trump Administration . It was published in 2018. Paperback came out in 2019. Finished just before the election of 2016. If anything, the book did not anticipate what we see now is a crisis of liberalism. It may have benefited from not trying to directly address what we now see today is these political issues. It was not written to address the headlines of today. Addressing the headlines. Do you think that President Trump addss to those . I think President Trump in a very savant way he intuited where those where. He understood, but certainly the Republican Party had not been constituted since ronald reagan. No longer a viable political entity and electoral entity. A growing number of people saw them aligned with the Republican Party. Freee Market Global economic orderr. We are now more interested in National Economic policy. Protecting jobs are being exported overseas. The working class that asserted itself in a Republican Party in which the elite and populace no longer aligned. The first thing trump had to do was rip hundred defeat the Republican Party before he took on the Democratic Party. I think the intuitive something that in many ways reflected the kind of move towards a post liberal order. Lets hear from our viewers. Lets begin with terry. Boca raton florida. Hi, terry. Terry, are you with us . He is not. Sorry about that. Terri, please go go ahead you know what, terry, we are going to have to put you on hold. We will try again. Richard. Michigan. You are on book tv. I have two questions. Is there a prescription for reversing this where we are destroying our liberalism . Is this part of the Thomas Coombs theory about paradigms once a theory starts to be established it destroys itself . That is it. These are both excellent questions. Let me focus on the second one. In some ways, whether a system always has selfdestruction. This is a very old view. This is the one that informed my book. It was a view that informed the great work democracy on america. It is the understanding that every political order has potentially the seeds of its own selfdestruction. When that order in some ways becomes an extreme version of itself it can no longer selfcorrect. I think that we are at that point today. The liberal order is facing not a threat as it has from the outside, especially in the 20th century from communism and fascism, but a threat from the inside. Whether or not this order has the capacity for self direction. Vicki. San diego. Good afternoon. I just want to say hello, peter. You are one of my favorite people. I love watching your program on the weekends. Secondly, i have been a lifelong liberal. Even when i was a little kid. Probably because i love my grandpa and he was a socialist. I really want to just read this book. I dont have anything to say and that i disagree with what ive been hearing you say. It is very interesting sounding book. If obama endorsed it, i know its a good book. Okay. Thats it. Thank you for calling in, vicki. We have tried socialism, communism, democracy, fascism. Are these just all part of what liberal democracy really is . Are they aberrations . Would they come back . Would they be successful . I think that we are all generally in agreement that communism and fascism failed because they were based on the wrong understanding of human nature. The idea that we are who we are because of the race we are in is the idea fascism. The idea o that we are who we ae because of our capacity to overcome any sense of self, overcome any sense of desire for the things closer to me or preference that communism would eliminate all particularity. All private property. That turned out to be a soft hundred false assumption of our human nature. Liberalism also has a assumption about that as well. We are radically self making selves. I taught a miss free self fashioning creatures. I think when taken to an extreme which i think it has been taken today, that is also a false ideology. Can our political order pull itself back from what seems to be a falsely ideological view or will it meet the same fate as communism did. Whats not defeated by next journal entity. It became unsustainable becauses it was not able to shore up its own to leave a bulls him. I just want to thank you for book tv. I have one short question for the professor. Is there an overlap between liberalism and conservatism. Thank you, sir. Well, in many many respects, it seems that we have called conservatism is really just a version of liberalism. One of the main points of my book. In the american political order, it has basically been an expressionism of early liberalism. Especially upon free markets. Freeing people from constraints or what we call liberalism, just another version of liberalism. Both of these rather than advancing its globalized economic order and an increasingly comprehensive liberal state order. For both of these together they have resulted in the increase of individualism in the increased world. A large state in a globalized market, we have seen both of those arise. Both of these forms of modern liberalism. In the state and economic forms. You did mention technology in our conversation. Give us an example. We both mentioned before the show that we are from the state of indiana. You cannot help but pass by the amish when youre traveling between south bend and fort wayne. It is not that the amish are not technological human beings, they have all kinds of technologies. The way they use or utilizes towards the end of preserving and supporting and sustaining their community. When they decide whether to adopt a form of technology, it is always with that and or mirpose in mind. We tend to think, well, we do not do that. We default the technology that advances our individual autonomy we should understand that technology is not a time to miss of who we think we are in the kind of community or society that we think we are. It will always serve human end. In the human end that we largely endorse our this. We need to see Tech Knowledge he shaped by deeper technology which is our Political Technology which defines our social order. Next call comes from bernie in new york. You are on with patrick. Why liberalism failed as the name of the book. Thank you. Simple question. Im having difficulty understanding the words. The liberalism and so forth. What i would like to know, you laid out the idea that liberalism has failed. To better understand it, what are the practical consequences . How do we see it in our everyday lives . Im 77 years old. I feel fairly free except for the fact that i have this corrupt leader that is so of noxious i cannot look at the world anymore. Beyond that, how does failed liberalism, what are the consequences in everyday life . Thank you. Thank you very much. Great question. If you look at a lot of the data that we find in the world, we are more prosperous, we are enjoying economic success more, certainly more than any human being ever to live in the history of the world. At the same time, when you look at a lot of other social science data, we are more isolated. We are more lonely. Less likely to be members of any association. Less likely to be members of a religious tradition. Less likely to seeig ourselves embedded in neighborhoods and communities. Less likely to be married. Less likely to have children. You are less likely to have a sibling than ever in the history of the world. Reported levels of loneliness are the highest ever in recorded history. What we have begun to see is a lowering of the mortality, average age of mortality in the United States. Not due to a want or lack of medicine, but rising rising rates of suicide and opioid addiction. Amid all of the good news, what we are seeing is maybe the things that matter the most to human beings. Members of something larger than ourselves. Whether we think we belong. Whether we think we will be remembered. He this is basically the argument of my book. The more liberalism has succeeded, the more more it is failing. A reminder to those of you that include lewd sending texan, have your name and city. What part does bigotry and racist attitudes play and dismantling rigorous discourse. One of the great achievements has been advancing the understanding of human beings. All members of the common human race. Being one of the great defenders of human dignity. Going back before liberalism in the christian tradition. In which of course Martin Luther king himself would recognize. A tradition that is older than the liberal political order. It seems to me that today we are having a very hard time not merely condemning bigotry and racism when we see it, but the race between where certain line should be drawn. Is there such a thing as a nation and the nationstate . It is being viewed as bigotry if you argue that there is National Borders and boundaries. Very difficult to imagine we can continue as a Political Society if suchh a view is regarded as bigoted and racist. Some point in the future we will nehave to have a frank and difficult discussion about what is a legitimate way to define who we are, who was that we will we think in political terms, versus in some ways what constitutes bigotry and what constitutes racism. I want to go back to bernie and howard beach new york. Do you think that President Trump has brought us to the edge of 250 years of years of liberal democracy . I do not know that donald trump himself has. I think it is more the conditions that led to a large number of our fellow countrymen unto vote for a man like donald trump. What they thought of as the american tradition. The american experiment. The american trajectory. That they believe a manhe only like donald trump could be the answer to the crisis and despair. I would hope that my fellow countrymen could look past donald trump. I know that that is difficult. With our fellow countrymen were so despairing that they voted for this man then something is wrong. Something is amiss. It may have more to do with what we share together than what draws us apart. Terry. Boca raton. Thank you. Loved the book. What about a third party going up. What is wrong with that . Well, i guess i could put on my Political Science hat. Third parties in the United States do not work very well. Because of our electoral system. Trump and the phenomenon of trump goes back to figures like ross perot, the beginnings of a populist movement in the u. S. That goes back several decades. Trump is the result of a discontent with a political configuration. The fundamental realignment. That is the following. The working class. They once voted solidly democratic as representing their interests. The left would vote for the labour party. They have moved to the right as they have seen what was the interest of the working class. At the same time, those conservative parties were not traditionally the party of the working class. They were the party of the elite. There is a lot of refiguring of both Political Parties to take account of this new configuration. I think what we had effectively is a redefinition of our political party. Income inequality plays quite a big role in your book as well when it comes to liberal democracy. Part of the argument in my book is liberalism sought to displace an old air across your fee on trent the result of your birth place of birth right. And to replace that with a new kind where your position is the result of your own abilities and your own talent. What we have seen, and i taught at princeton, georgetown, georgetown and notre dame, what we have seen is this can replicate itself. A new replication of a new generation. We saw this, of course, in the College Admission scandal. Parents were able to game the system to get their kids into the best school. A manipulation that was on the other side of legality that in many ways is a kind of manipulation that takes place legally every day. The ability to get your own children in a situation where they can come in this order. Liberalism was never about displacing inequality. One form with a new kind. I think that we are at a point where the view of the many is that this system is as corrupt and broken as the old was. Why liberalism failed. The irony is the creation of a new era across the fee that is enjoyed fixed social positions. Even architects forthright about their ambitions to displace the old. They were not silent about their hopes of creating a new. Professor, are you you alarmed that liberal democracy is on th i am aligned. The other stands, it seems seems somewhat predictable. Its own logic working out. We should not be surprised that we are at this point. Liberalism and democracy are not necessarily good friend with each other. They may not be compatible in the long run. I am much more sympathetic with a robust form of democracy than a view of liberty in which we see ourselves free from one another. Becoming more democratic. More able to exercise civic capacities to exercise those that we would need. I would be happy to see a decline of liberalism and an advance in democracy. Technology can assist that. It can. But like every tool, it is doubleedged. Hello. This is really interesting. Since people are tribal i nature and we are becoming free to be able to break away from some of these restrictions, the issue becomes the popular delusions, are we then free to go off the rails and establish new tribes that may or may not be good. The old tribes lead to a lot of warfare. Leading to chaos. I like your comment about people not properlyns considering human nature in proposing these things it is a great question. Part of our nature is to congregate as groups. My question in some ways is, if we deny that part of our nature, which it seems liberalism does. It challenged the idea of any form of we, and a bounded sense of we, are we in many ways inviting a kind of reaction that could prove to be extremely unhealthy. Not just a liberal, but outright dangerous. Like anything where you deny the existence of some aspect of human nature, it is likely to manifest itself in a pathological form. This is where would worry in some ways about the denial of the tribal nature or than that it denial of our nature as human beings that seek to gather together and defined groups reading to a much more visceral and potentially dangerous form of adherence. Tyler in detroit. Confusing liberalism, as your book treats it and muddling it with the Democratic Party in america function to make the greater discourse that imagines other horizons beyond liberalism difficult. Did you follow that . It seems to track where the Democratic Party is. In fact, to some extent i succeeded in making the case that what we think of as the differences between republicans and democrats at least traditionally has been a difference between the digital frame. The economic that once defined the right and the social that still continues to define the left has been sort of working hand in glove with each other. Advancing simultaneously the Global Economic order in a liberal order which increasingly we are not called upon to care for each other. We largely rely on mechanisms of the market or mechanisms of the state to care for each other. I hopee in many ways i was even handed in my critique or raising questions about the current clinical alignment and if it is any comfort to conservatives and liberals, finding something of value in the book and found something that they found to be comforting. In your conclusion afterth liberalism, you write we must outgrow the age of ideology. I ideology, what what i really mean, going back to an earlier part of our conversation is it eerie if human nature that is probably fundamentally wrong or at least lets say exaggerated. One seeks to conform an entire political order to that view of human nature which will hold on trents only destruct that disorder. I think we saw that in communism. The idea that human beings do not in some way care about their own or can be brought to a point where they will no longer care about their own. That proved to be a false ideology. I would say in many ways we are faced with a similar challenge right now. It is not from an external power right now. It is our own misunderstanding of who we are as human beings. Unless that can be correct did, and it will take a lot of doing, unless that can be done, it seems to me that our political order is not just doomed, we are in for a very rocky ride. Is this written for the layman or is it an academic test i found many people who have been able to read the book who have found it accessible and challenging at the same time. What about nationalism as a philosophy . I actually spoke at the conference this last summer. What i really thought to do at the conference was remind people that nationalism was originally a progressive project. It was not a conservative product. Going back to Woodrow Wilson and teddy roosevelt. It sought to liberate us from our localities. Our narrow parochial commitment. I think that nationalism is in some ways a dangerous entity. Whether it is progressive or conservative. And by which it is bound up in the nation. I would much rather have human beings, on the one hand, see ourselves ourselves as parts of a community which is vibrant. The kind of community in which people know each other and can share with each other. Through thatom kind of community see ourselves sharing a common humanity. Members of the community and members of humanity should not be at odds with each other. My fear is nationalism pretend that wants to be for the community and the home we are to belong to. A cautionary idea of nation is always warranted. Why liberalism failed. We appreciate you coming dow