Reformation 21

Marsden ends The Twilight of the American Enlightenment with reflections on the dead-end to which we have come. Consensus liberalism suffers from a fatal dishonesty. Because it claims to serve the common good and at the same time sustain authenticity with what it regards as exemplary non-judgmentalism, liberalism cannot recognize itself as merely one view among others. It must see itself as transcending the worldviews competing for control over American society (and, increasingly, over world culture). It is this conceit that supports the tyrannies of liberalism, which range from full blown political correctness and the politics of denunciation (accusations of homophobia, bigotry, and sexism) to various forms of social exclusion of the kind so blatantly expressed by Richard Rorty (“that’s not the way we talk about things”).

• WSJ Review of the book
• Chicago Trib
• Marsden does an interview with Al Mohler

In the interview at 35:22

The two ideals: “Trust yourself” and “trust the experts on natural science”. There was a lack of real coherence in this and that splits apart in the 1960s with radical individualism.