In Why Liberalism Failed (2018), Patrick Deneen asserted liberalism’s failure to be the inevitable result of severing ties to whatever remained of the Classical and Christian wisdom which had constrained the excesses of the human spirit. However, there is a distinction between “liberalism,” which largely for Deneen refers to the progressive movements of the past century, and the historically complex “liberal tradition” which retains connections to the wisdom of the pre­-moderns. In Regime Change, Deneen insists that the crisis in “liberalism” is irreparable, demanding revolutionary change.

There are without doubt regrettable features in our current situation, but are they indicative of the liberal tradition comprehensively understood? Deneen’s “regime change” implies wholesale abandonment of that tradition without gratitude for its achievements. There are obviously elements within the tradition that we should preserve such as the abolition of slavery, the enfranchisement of women, and efforts to make the equal dignity of all human beings more visible in the world. Deneen presumably would preserve these and thus owe something to the liberal tradition he otherwise wishes to transform. As we enter a postliberal future, there is a debate between rival visions of what is to be changed but also of what is to be preserved.

What exactly is to be changed? With this book, Deneen seeks to clarify what sort of regime is supposed to replace the current American order. In fact, Deneen proposes first to recover the wisdom of the ancients, rejecting the “ideology of progress,” in pursuit of “the peaceful but vigorous overthrow of a corrupt and corrupting liberal ruling class,” to rediscover “early-modern forms of conservatism,” or “common-good conservatism,” involving the formation of a “new elite.”

Part I, titled “Our Cold Civil War,” is an extensive indictment of the derangements in our current situation. Deneen’s analysis of what is wrong is not without merit. His remedy is to recover resources in the Western tradition that remain potentially available to us but have been ignored or denigrated by the prejudice that later is always better. Deneen finds Aristotle, Polybius, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Tocqueville especially relevant to regaining our bearings. He takes especially from the classical thinkers the concept of mixed government or balance between classes which implies skepticism about the American separation of powers. Perhaps he thinks that the latter has become a device for a balance of interests within a ruling class increasingly indifferent to the non-elite. The Framers of our Constitution had clear reasons for their choices and the courage to go in a new direction. Deneen does not engage with them.

Originally, the liberal tradition aimed to dismantle a rigidly hierarchical, aristocratic order thereby expanding the opportunity for individual self­-development (the movement from status to contract). The goal was not, contra Deneen, to dismantle institutions of family, religion, and intermediate associations. Tocqueville, recognizing this, accepted self-interest rightly understood, recognizing the reality of a new post-aristocratic, democratic age while endorsing the wisdom of self-restraint. The faith of the liberal tradition maintained that human beings are capable of both self-development and self­-regulation—that they could be both free and responsible. This meant limiting governmental control, accepting openness to experimentation and innovation, and ensuring protection from continual interference in our personal lives. The importance of a religious-moral sense of duty, and realistic skepticism about human aspirations, was recognized. The positive value of improving the material lot of human beings through the growth of wealth included denying that the growth of wealth is an end in itself. Adam Smith understood this distinction very well.

One might say that the liberal tradition at its best is not “liberalism” as we now know it. Whether the degradations of our time were inevitable from the beginning is a matter of debate. There is a strong argument for a liberal outlook rightly understood. Whatever changes in the “regime” we might contemplate should be judged in this way. Deneen’s quest for “common-good conservatism,” it turns out, is not “conservative.”

The classical virtue of moderation, of self-control, is in decline as Deneen rightly argues. He describes a “shabby civil war” among antagonistic parties within the meritocratic elite “thoroughly invested in building up the existential threat posed by its opponent, while relieving itself of the requisite self-reflection to address its own shortcomings.” Deneen invokes Aristotle’s argument for a strong middle class, neither too rich nor too poor, to mitigate the self-serving tendencies of the rich and the resentments of the poor. He describes the current ruling class as “one of the worst of its kind produced in history.” He cites James Burnham’s account of the “managerial revolution” which has led to the growth of the administrative state and its extension through universities, corporations, and the media. The “ideology” of progress, which is not identical to historical improvement, denigrates the past, and the ruling elite asserts the right, on the basis of “expertise,” to dictate conduct to ordinary people. A particular perversion of the liberal tradition is the advent of “identity politics” which is destructive of individuality.

Deneen argues that such “tyrannical liberalism” is the culmination of all forms of liberalism. It might better be understood as a betrayal of the liberal tradition, unraveling the genuine accomplishments of the liberal tradition in the effort to cure it of alleged imperfections. Deneen calls for a “better form of conservatism.” What then is “common-good conservatism”?

Deneen argues that classical liberalism, progressive liberalism, and Marxism all reject pre-modern wisdom, dividing “not over the goal of politics, but over the means.” There is no social order of consequence without an elite, and common good conservatism seeks a new alternative elite, informed by reawakening “early conservatism” which “eschewed the modern embrace of progress as a main purpose and goal of politics.” He insists “modern” conservatism is merely a constrained version of the commitment to progress. He sees a connection between his conservatism and Marxism in the sense that they “share a deep hostility to the arrangements of modern liberalism.” They differ in what to do about those arrangements. Deneen agrees with some of his critics, especially on the left, because he shares the left’s antipathy to liberalism and capitalism; but he advocates an alternative Marxists would call “reactionary.” Given his alienation from the liberal tradition, his conservatism is both reactionary and revolutionary.

Common-good conservatism, Deneen says, aligns with the “common sense” of ordinary people who “seek stability, predictability, and order within the context of a system that is broadly fair … within which prospects of life success do not merely hinge on wealth, education, or status.” Yet how far are these desires from the classical liberal tradition’s belief in the rule of law, freedom to pursue reasonable self-development, respect for others, and rejection of identity politics?

These are not absent in today’s America among many who continue to embrace “the primacy of family, community, and the human goods” but who also embrace the value of individual self-development. How far would Deneen’s imagined alternative elite go in curtailing individual self-expression? What will the formal order of a common-good conservative society look like? Deneen spends little time on the formalities of order, despite the fact that revolutionary regime change will inevitably have a substantial impact on the structures within which policies are formulated, and those structures will limit revolutionary aspirations.

Deneen invokes the various ideas of a mixed constitution expressed by Aristotle, Polybius, and St. Thomas Aquinas, envisioning mutual accommodation between the few and the many, accepting both aristocratic and democratic elements in a regime he calls “Aristopopulism.” His belief that “liberalism justifies the emergence of an elite whose primary self-assigned role was to prevent the masses from forestalling progress,” ignores the liberal commitment to improve the lot of ordinary human beings. He talks, like Marxists, as though there was a conspiracy in which the long process of emergence from the middle ages into modern commercial society was conceived and pursued from the outset by an elite—one to be superseded now by his imagined, postliberal elite. Also like Marxists, he seems to believe that his new elite will not be subject to the corruptions of the earlier class.

Deneen never mentions the Reformation, the rise of literacy, the scientific revolution, or the choice made by large numbers of people to leave the countryside for the city in search of a better life. It is as if some very clever people knew from the start exactly what they wanted to do, while there were no good reasons for people to change their way of life or explore new opportunities. Of course, there was resistance to change as well as embrace. That is the messiness of historical existence: people increasingly sought, and continue to seek, the best way to respond to historical change. Deneen speaks as if the results have been mostly negative. This attitude characterizes various intellectual elites (socialist critiques, Marxist or “utopian”) which arose simultaneously with the expansion of modern commercial society).

His “conservatism” is thus a revolutionary movement promoting a new elite to transform our lives. In rejecting existing American conservatism as a constrained form of liberalism, Deneen is appropriating the word in support of a revolution: “To constitute a political and social order worth conserving, something revolutionary must first take place: the priority of the liberal progressive agenda must be displaced for one that seeks stability, order, and continuity.” Revolution first, then preservation. How is this to occur? How is the spirit of his revolution to create a coherent, stable, non-revolutionary culture? Initiating radical change cannot ensure control of the consequences.

Deneen sees “a nascent political form, largely percolating from the bottom up in the discontents of a recalcitrant working class.” They need the leadership of a new elite. What is required is “an increasingly multiracial, multiethnic working-class party … to … uproot an otherwise hostile anti-culture.” He envisions a sympathetic, cooperative relationship between a new elite and the commons. To achieve this, the main cultural institutions dominated by progressive elites must be transformed. This includes, among other things, diminishing the importance of elite colleges and universities in favor of practical vocations and trades, limiting the capacity of enormous corporations to control policies in the states, control of immigration to defend the American working class, favoring caucuses over primaries to diminish the role of money in elections, using governmental power to shore up marriage and family, renewal of the “Christian roots of our civilization,” and promoting a “public Christian culture.” However attractive this may be, we cannot forget that Christians are not of one mind in the post-Christendom era. Assuming he means the Catholic tradition, which eras in that tradition does Deneen have in mind? High medieval? Counter-Reformation? Apparently not Vatican II and after.

His defense of ordinary people asserts that “it is not enough to ensure their freedom to pursue such goods; rather, it is the duty of the political order to positively guide them to, and provide the conditions for the enjoyment of, the goods of human life” (italics in original). Of course, this is what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt claimed to be doing as progressives, making freedom “effective.”

Deneen is loath to acknowledge, or regret, the possible loss of the accomplishments of the liberal tradition. Nor does he speak of the formal institutions of government and how the constitutional system might have to change in order to accommodate the revolutionary program he endorses. And, despite his diatribe against capitalism, there is no discussion of how we shall continue to produce the wealth necessary to support the world we have made for ourselves.

Finally, Deneen ignores another dimension of “post-liberalism”: the technological revolution. Might the vast technological transformations underway overwhelm, in not yet fully understood ways, liberalism, Marxism, and conservatism? The technological elite may not recognize or feel constrained by any of these, confronting us with a different post-modernity, not tied to any of the historical alternatives, depersonalizing human relations and encouraging liberation from bodily existence. The Promethean rebellion might override whatever efforts we make to constrain it.