Liberalism started strong. It managed to put its ideals into practice—first indirectly as others reacted to liberal aspirations, and then directly by building liberal democratic institutions once in power. And it produced results to show for it. Then it became the establishment, embraced by most politicians, bureaucrats, and activists. Establishment liberalism did not adjust to new realities. Worse, liberals lost the plot and some of liberalism’s values together with it.
Liberalism’s derailment was the result of several concurrent trends. For one, the postindustrial economy made it much harder for liberal democracy to deliver on its promises. Liberalism changed as the college-educated segment of society became more dominant, and this made liberal democracies less likely to seek solutions to the postindustrial challenges that heavily afflicted the less educated. This was a sin of omission.
The sin of commission was that the postindustrial educated elite abandoned many of the key precepts of liberalism, including the commitment to self-government, community, and shared prosperity, which were critical for liberal democracy’s past success. While both sins may have started with liberalism as a political movement, they also affected liberal democratic institutions and liberal philosophies.
