Tyler Cowen reviews Patrick J. Deneen's book Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future

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"That is the new Patrick J. Deneen book, with the subtitle Toward a Postliberal Future.  I would say that reading and trying to review this book most of all raises the question of what a review is for.  As you might expect from Deneen, the book is well-written and comes across as highly intelligent.  The question is what one should make of the actual claims and content.

The opening chapter tells us what a failure America is, but not much in the way of concrete evidence is cited (what again would an American passport auction for?). Deneen writes “A growing chorus of voices reflects on the likelihood and even desirability of civil war…”, but that I think means he simply faced some publication lags with the book.  America still seems to be gaining on most of the world.

By the end of the next chapter, we are told “Unfortunately, the current ruling class is uniquely ill equipped for reform, having become one of the worst of its kind produced in history…”

C’mon, people…C’mon, Patrick!  I don’t even have to invoke Godwin’s Law to refute that one.  I can think of a few historical elites who were slightly worse than those who go to Harvard and Yale.

The quick segment on Mill on slavery (p.82) is both wrong and deeply unfair.

Burke is closer to Mill than Deneen might wish to think, especially if one studies Burke on Ireland.

The chapter “The Wisdom of the People” is rather under-argued in a post-Bryan Caplan, post-Garett Jones intellectual era.  You don’t have to agree with Caplan or Jones to recognize they offer orders of magnitude more evidence than Deneen does.  One of the bigger lessons here is that you can no longer write such a book without seriously engaging with social science.

All this talk about creating a “mixed constitution,” but what exactly does he want to see happen?  Is “Machiavellian means to achieve Aristotelian ends” really what we need?  (Might some rather mundane changes in policy get us further?)  What exactly are we supposed to do to increase the status, influence, and reputation of the populace, as Deneen repeatedly suggests?  Where is the evidence any of that is going to work, whatever “work” might mean in this context?  This book will not tell you.

National service, tariffs, and immigration restrictions are all endorsed, but with no consideration of the rather extensive empirical literatures on these topics, mostly not supporting Deneen’s hastily presented conclusions.

Is liberalism really (p.229) “premised on the complete liberation of the individual from any limiting claims of an objective good…”?  Mill certainly didn’t think so, nor did most other classical liberals.

I would start by distinguishing the social consequences of birth control — which isn’t going to be reversed and shouldn’t be — with the social consequences of classical liberal ideas.  Is Deneen in fact willing to endorse birth control?  Inquiring minds wish to know.

If Western liberalism is “exhausted,” is he short the market?

Overall, I leave this book with the impression that it is no accident classical liberal ideals have endured as much as they have."