The Anatomy of Antiliberalism:

...Dm urcririg a Pcn m:d G4 x1 Many of the discrete essays loosely 1111W - 14 joined together in this book began life as '0 reviews of the works of particular thinkers...

...Jane Redmont has gone beyond CATHOLIC theories to talk directly to American WOMEN But this cannot be right...

...A provoca- of making folks like Maclntyre and Lasch tive but misleading opener for several "guilty by association" with antidemocrats IF his is a slash-and-burn book...

...known disciple of MacIntyre and Unger," creasingly lack the means whereby we can they are very much home-grown...

...In his cri- Jane Redmont interviewed more than tique of Maclntyre, Holmes uses a tacti- 100 women from all walks of life...

...To original thinkers that American culture a mythic past...

...Jean Bethke Elshtain revile a tradition devoted, among other Holmes knows he is open to the charge things, to freedom of thought...

...Carl Schmitt, they have failed to ponder...

...reasons...

...their splendid and surprising diversity...

...five pages to a political screed against liberal society in moral progress...

...He struggles I * Mok to find identical claims in similar words but A Z too often this winds up being a linkage rathe 30: 5 November 1993 Commonweal on a par with, say, "Hitler opposed eating would still disagree, for one cannot tidily She writes: "For to live in a political realm meat...

...It is impossible to address restrictions on police behavior, free elec- cherished...

...ly liberals by Holmes's definition...

...is by way of a starter, not a meal...

...Rather, they challenge the THE ANATOMY OF ANTILIBERALISM he does one is riveted by the spectacle...

...When Lasch criticizes feminists for suffice to indict him as beyond the pale...

...X perindividualists and the like...

...But sort of freedom that gets encoded in enStephen Holmes the book doesn't hold together...

...Their stories arc interspersed with chapters on key constitutional doctrine, constitutionality aspects of Church life today as well as women's opinions on a wide will falter...

...Agreed: major European thinkers, is none other democrats...

...These are their fondest ideas"), why take them seto hit his targets from time to time and when easy targets compared to the American riously...

...Indeed, "liberal culture to be American...

...MO 63057-9999...

...Lears lifts up for our consideration the long nitarians are discussed) are softhearted Thus they make universal a view that is, in concern on the part of many of our most nostalgists pining for the lost harmony of fact, partial and open to contestation...

...JANE REDMONT illegitimate exercise of power...

...Maclntyre's After Virtue becomes "a summa of the postwar antiliberal mind...

...Maclntyre is taken to task primarily BY JANE RED IONT for his defense of authority and religion, Some American Catholic women are a defense Holmes finds incompatible with choosing to leave the Church, yet most stay...

...So: thinkers he is busily dispatching, but his of representative government, who was too if they are so harmless and so unconheart isn't in it...

...He defines liberalism in the usual reformers, among others-that "unguided therefore self-evident standards of behavway-as a political order devoted to "re- individual judgment" would suffice to ior, by the elementary problems of human ligious toleration, freedom of discussion, hold intact much that Luther, and others, living-together...

...However, I Commonweal 5 November 1993: 31 shared-beliefs in the very liberal truisms lieves he can control and define everything...

...Box 842, Liguori...

...disappearance of authority from the mod- means to be confronted anew, without the Let me give a sense of how Holmes con- ern world and tied it to the fateful as- religious trust in a sacred beginning and structs his deposition against the antilib- sumption-on the part of Protestant without the protection of traditional and erals...

...another five to the toto...

...In his preface, Holmes ponders why ther or not that understanding of freedom "some of America's leading intellectuals is itself open to critical scrutiny...

...AMERICAN to community...

...But to put Lasch in a world ly Laschian in his attacks on the "arrogant option...

...Second, those American intellectualsSLAYING STRAW DRAGONS or intellectuals whose lives were spent primarily in an American context-people like Leo Strauss, Alasdair Maclntyre, and Christopher Lasch-scarcely "revile" freedom of thought...

...Holmes does try, from time to time, a fascinating but morally dubious theorist, they "benefit from historical circumstances to give a bit of credit here and there to the a critic of Weimar Germany but a defender that make them politically harmless...

...Holmes endorses, for example...

...D 32: 5 November 1993 Commonweal...

...them...

...Thus, precisely on the needs of mothers and chilwhen Holmes claims that Maclntyre regrets e04b...

...he is opposed to tech- tire liberal menu, we need more than he interesting fellow than the Lasch Holmes nological triumphalism...

...Clearly he Phk $13.95 knows he's got a problem on his hands fusAvailable at your religious bookstore or through ing a radical democrat or populist like Loyola University Press • 3441 N. Ashland Avenue  Chicago, IL 61)657 MasterCardNisa orders call (800) 621-1008 • (312)281-1818 in Illinois Lasch with an aristocratic defender of the ancien regime like Maistre...

...It would eliminate Schmitt, too...

...Maybe what To Order: Call TOLL-FREE 1-800-325-9521, ext...

...Fortunately, ing...

...Hell, Lasch but he accepts the fact that not everything es in detail-Strauss, MacIntyre, Lasch, makes no bones about it...

...Now available in paper...

...Cornmonuval) portant Western political theorists associ- `...illuminates the as yet underutilized force of women in the ated, variously, with "the liberal tradition," Church...

...lighted-is powerfully instructive for it liberal "self' against critics who see it as Now, to Christopher Lasch, arguably reminds us, as does Lasch, that an Amer- a version of "acquisitive individualism," one of the most important voices in ican can cherish the Constitution, believe following the lead of C.B...

...GENEROUS LIVES Lasch's works easily unmask him "as a cultural conservative cloaked in a leftish AMERICAN CATHOLIC WOMEN TODAY fleece...

...For Havel, it is precisely this attitude that Whatever one thinks of where MacIn- i lies at the root of a contemporary crisis in tyre comes out, the fact that authority is one 1, human consciousness, culture, and poliof his central concerns does not, in itself, tics...

...dent authority within "liberal culture" by TRIUMPH BOOKS contrast to a liberal constitutional polity...

...He does not be- has given us...

...Now I'm The great Hannah Arendt lamented the scends power and those who are in power, being unfair, but not by much...

...By definition this Ts cooer i12e .7emcle cSouf eliminates Maistre-as it does his opponents, the French revolutionaries, scarce- o1lJQtiTl olI CTSm...

...rr~Uttsh rs Weekly) most importantly, Hobbes, must get axed "A long-overdue look at the real lives of Catholic women in all as well if Holmes means to be consistent...

...The issues that critics of conbe sure, MacIntyre has his own case of polis was becoming banalized, in large part be- temporary liberalism take on get rather envy, but what he is about is primarily an cause of a growing tendency from the nine- short shrift from Holmes: three pages deepistemological account of traditions, not teenth century on "to equate material and voted to the common good...

...It isn't so much that we should folks and Lasch, at points, is no doubt true...

...beliefs that are widely if imperfectly state budgets to inhibit corruption, and economic policy committed to sustained growth on the basis of private ownership and freedom of contract...

...Can there be "constitutional gov- range of timely issues...

...disparaging motherhood, he does so from There is much more going on in Maclntyre's a deep and wide recognition of an alterwork than a hankering after settled agree- native feminist-or socially conscious ments...

...In Generous Lives, aims to outlaw the very idea of authority...

...If you want to take on MacIntyre at this alternative American tradition and its diminution of the public realm...

...but Sandel, in fact, is critical of MacIntyre disagree robustly because those who most Here Holmes would have been well- and shares not much at all with Roberto strenuously adhere to the epistemology instructed to take a look at Jackson Lears's Unger, being most indebted to the philosoMacIntyre associates with the liberal es- No Place of Grace (Pantheon), a provoca- pher Charles Taylor, who is not discussed tablishmentarians-emotivism, subjectiv- tive study of "antimodernism and the save haphazardly by Holmes...

...Without some are deeply committed and those who are alienated, the activists and sort of authoritative adherence to, say, the uninvolved...

...his defense of moral skepticism and three decades...

...But Holmes's particular sort Lasch is, after all, a historian, not primarily than Vaclav Havel who sounds positive- of liberal polity is not the only democratic a philosopher...

...All the founders of this liberal polity were mightily con- Catholic women and create a realistic, TODAY cerned with authority and legitimacy, vexed fascinating portrait of the female soul by how to distinguish the rightful from the of a living religion...

...In Generous Lives, we meet women who constitute our own tradition...

...Better, I should have thought, just am to state at the outset "I don't like any of Valles leans parables Conroy offers an You'll find wise, witty, these people very much, and here's why"from al times and experiential point yet puzzling answers cultures to present the of view in discussing to life's many questions than to devise awkward categories that are eternal message of God fg natius' classic work...

...Let it be said, finally, that trounces...

...comiums to free thought and ponder wheHarvard University Press, $29.95, 330 pp...

...dren...

...He tries to get out Stephen Holmes, a professor poste aims to do in Joseph de Maistre, a of the conundrum by claiming that Maclnof political science at the French Catholic writer and diplomat who tyre and others are not quasi-Fascists but University of Chicago, sets died in 1821, and whose own ire was lev- that "they have absorbed and reproduced out to slay the dragons of an- eled against the assumptions and excess- rhetoric whose history and implications tiliberalism wherever they may be lurk- es of the French Revolution...

...But each of these interventions case for emphasis, as do we all from time raises legitimate concern...

...Holmes strives mightily to associate his crew of antiliberals one with the other, but the ONE MINUTE harder he tries the more tendentious it NONSENSE seems...

...Perhaps and Unger-were and are prepared to deular American writer...

...Indeed, many im- "...refreshingly honest...

...If to time...

...thinkers Holmes goes after...

...The result is a terribly un- close to Nazi doctrine for comfort ("resid- scious (that is, they pay little or no atteneven effort...

...842 and use your Holmes means to indict here is indepen- MasterCard or Visa...

...Better to slay Ti-Discerning Heart ANTHONO DE ME LLO.5T the dragons now...

...Communism, utilitarianism-refuse to recognize transformation of American culture...

...with the second part to before modern minds...

...Moreover, in some transformed context these folks Holmes describes as thinkers who "declare ' » bAp ** * *L the entire Western world except for themFall Highlights from Loyola University Press selves to be depraved and diseased...

...For Arendt, the loss of author- that problem without relocating authority, tions, constitutional government based on ity is not something to be celebrated but, even if in some rough-and-ready way, in a separation of powers, publicly inspectable rather, a modem reality to be confronted...

...I didn't quite recognize either Maclntyre Oanc (:avuIina GScari, coauthor of Gm u(]r Catholic) or Lasch in Holmes's characterizations of New from TRIUMPH'' BOONS...

...who] entertains no closest to Lasch in this regard, among fend a democratic polity against antigreat philosophical pretensions...

...Holmes wants us to partake from the enI know is quite a different and far more He is not antiscience...

...Given the intensity of his ual sympathy" is the way Holmes de- tion to the "origins and political abuse of wrath-and his prose-Holmes is bound scribes it), also gets scrutinized...

...work" within which disputations of a certain Heidegger, Schmitt, Strauss" and the like When Holmes begins to build his own sort could flourish-disagreements, not is not to see him at all...

...You'll discover how de Mello's best-selling of little help...

...If so, he should have said so...

...Because they are there and they annoy the hell out of Holmes...

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...Lasch is "easily unmasked" as lieve one must simply trust in blind faith, the contemporary antiliberals he discussa culturally conservative...

...therefore, all vegetarians are proto- sever the culture from its definitional po- with neither authority nor the concomitant Hitlerites-or their ideas might become such litical framework...

...awareness that the source of authority tranif the circumstances were ripe...

...What does it mean to these LIVES liberal verities...

...His interpretation of the loss of authority...

...She cal nuclear weapon that demolishes many talked to women between the ages of 17 and 92 - from cities, important liberal thinkers who helped to suburbs, and rural areas...

...More his strongest, that is where you must be- chief spokesmen-Henry Adams is high- compelling are Holmes's defense of the gin...

...This may help to account for the somewhat jerky and disjointed feel to the volume...

...When mainstream and radical femthe lost "harmony of the past and the long- ±s: inists trashed motherhood, finding it a lost `framework of medieval agreement,"' state of abjection and dependency-and he misplaces the accent of MacIntyre's they did do this-Lasch's ripostes always work...

...itarians" to the man (no female commutheir own epistemological commitments...

...might not be so harmless...

...Liberalism," Holmes claims, "is as antagonistic to authority as women to be Catholic...

...MacIntyre is not calling for restora- drew upon an alternative, and, arguably, tionism but for recognition that a "frame- feminist set of possibilities...

...MacPherson and American public discourse over the past in separation of powers and free elections others...

...Michael Sandel is able to us...

...Where Holmes falters, I believe, is woman's-tradition in America, one that in his failure to recognize that MacIntyre helped to create a vast array of social prois not primarily a political thinker so much vision during the Progressive Era based as an epistemological protagonist...

...But, again, the Lasch whose work Lasch is a democrat and an egalitarian...

...He no doubt overstates his find much that has gone awry, much that are selfish...

...out legitimate authority...

...to be women...

...treated offhandedly as "perhaps the bestall agree, by no means, but that we in- But Lasch's sources are not Heidegger...

...Lasch is a polemicist and and accountability and all the rest, and yet of rights against those who claim rights a provocateur...

...First, a good bit of Holmes's ri- like Maistre or Schmitt...

...Lasch is a "pop- is, or should be, under our control...

...I have in mind, for example, 0 Pbk $1295 I~natius' Rules for One Minute Nonsense- "hard" and "soft" antiliberals to which Discernment can help Pbk $10.95 in finding a personal Holmes appends "hard" and "soft" surelationship with God...

...That there may be positive case, having dispatched his foes, comforting harmonies-seems unavail- a convergence of concerns between these the book is a letdown...

...Admittedly, it may be the best we in which he is seeing "eye-to-eye with anthropocentrism of modern man" who be- can do, but that is another argument...