Twilight of the American Enlightenment

R.R. Reno, Reformation21 March 19, 2014

>After World War II, a consensus about truth gave way to a consensus about the importance of consensus. The result was a liberal politics without principle that required an arbitrary (because without principle) and sometimes ruthless suppression of dissent. This consensus approach eventually encouraged a committed and sometimes fierce politics of conviction. Thus the turbulent 1960's and the culture wars of recent decades. That's the thesis of George Marsden's readable and insightful history of American liberalism, The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief.

Arthur Schlesinger's 1949 book, The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom, articulated the new consensus liberalism. Capitalism and technology, he argued, lever modern man out of traditional forms of social solidarity. The resulting homelessness makes us vulnerable to collectivist ideologies such as communism and fascism. He proposed a politics of mediation between the new freedoms of modernity and the enduring human need for solidarity. It would be liberal because committed to constitutional freedoms, and at the same time "social" because committed to using state power to manage capitalism and directs its creative power toward the common good. With this combination Schlesinger promises to "restore the balance between individual and community."

Twilight of the American Enlightenment

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