Melancholy Liberalism

...Anderson’s judgment about how best to deal with these problems stems primarily from his view of the importance of culture...

...Anderson touches on, but does not explore, these virtues, so liberal democracy sometimes appears too selfi sh and low in his telling, and its good qualities less individual and more vestigially communal than they are...

...Social failures such as those that followed Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society did not result from economic disruption alone...

...He correctly ridicules the Supreme Court’s ludicrous discovery of the “right to defi ne one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life...

...My third question concerns religion...

...The standpoint from which he analyzes liberal democracy’s shortcomings is strongly infl uenced by Roman Catholic intellectuals such as Michael Novak, Pierre Manent, and Bertrand de Jouvenel...

...Aristotle’s fl exibility in recommending political institutions in the light of a rational account of human happiness, or Plato’s rational account of the good, just, and noble that permits reasonable subtlety in following the imperfect images of these ideas, are models of a rational guidance that shapes gently, not with absolutism’s icy hand...

...Anderson closes by calling for a “renewed commitment to classical education...

...Anderson explores the effect of these tendencies and of apolitical utopianism or fantasy in authors he criticizes such as Rawls, Sartre, and Negri, in Europe’s extreme secularism, and in our Supreme Court’s inventive excesses...

...The fi rst issue is Anderson’s reticence about natural rights...

...In general, indeed, Anderson downplays the relation between religion and reason...

...The problem is that this says nothing of rational claims to universality...

...Even they, however, cannot fully govern how we should rank and use our powers, or the justice and effectiveness of our practices and institutions...

...We may engage Anderson’s analysis most usefully by raising several questions about it, and discussing them allows us to suggest approaches to the problems of liberal democracy that modify his arguments...

...He suggests, indeed, that one can “argue for the universal truth of one’s faith” while still tolerating “human practices that fall short of the ideal,” and admitting “the uncertain nature of moral life...

...He opens by discussing some friendly and unfriendly critics of democratic capitalism, turns to questions of civil society, religion, and judicial activism in the United States, and concludes with alternating discussions of good and bad analyses of liberalism and modernity...

...Consequently, they can be ameliorated by renewed attention to family, neighborhoods, and other institutions of civil society, and these gain sustenance from religion...

...This book as a whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts, for Anderson skips lightly over issues such as education and technology that a complete discussion should consider, and the occasional nature of the essays and reviews cannot be altogether overcome...

...It also allows unprecedented pluralism and, as Anderson writes, we “should indeed be pluralists, open to the varieties of human fl ourishing, at least up to a point...

...Anderson is right to suggest how continued religious health in American liberal democracy elevates us and helps prevent a mad dash to selfi sh vulgarity...

...we therefore benefi t from the breadth, communal friendship, and moral seriousness that religion can enhance...

...It is otherwise diffi cult to account for his confi - dence in faith’s reasonable relaxation of its universal demands...

...He asserts individualism’s tendency to willfulness, nihilism, and libertinism much more than he explores what is natural and reasonable in individual freedom...

...Anderson would not think so, but he apparently leaves the possibility of “universal moral claims,” such as “the moral superiority of the traditional family,” to the “precepts of one’s faith...

...Connected to this reticence is insuffi cient attention to character and virtue...

...Mark Blitz, the Fletcher Jones professor of political philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, is the author, most recently, of Duty Bound: Responsibility and American Public Life...

...But this view overlooks how toleration changes religions by limiting the elements in many of them that seek full legal or political control...

...Liberal democracies foster (though they hardly guarantee) certain virtues: hard work, tolerance, pleasantness, responsibility...

...As Anderson tells us in this prudent yet lively work, politics is imperfect...

...Not only the extremists’ murderous hatred, but also many of its legal, cultural, and sexual restrictions would need to be transformed...

...We will help to protect ourselves from a threatening winter of discontent if we linger in the autumnal liberalism that Anderson favors, and refl ect on the problems it raises...

...The Founders’ religious references do not gainsay the fact that American faith becomes more a private than a public matter...

...It is intelligent to advance them through the mechanisms Anderson prefers, and against the tendencies he deplores...

...At the same time, he is alive to the Catholic church’s former attacks on modernity...

...But each is illuminating...

...A related problem is that moral precepts do not guide suffi ciently our choice of ways of human fl ourishing...

...Cultural changes, directly and through the Supreme Court’s mistakes, also caused them...

...Originalism without excellence is despotism...

...Compared with such sophomoric mumblings, Justice William O. Douglas’s hazy emanations and penumbras are the essence of mature sobriety...

...BY MARK BLITZ Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents by Brian C. Anderson ISI, 225 pp., $25 Brian C. Anderson’s Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents is a clearly written, thoughtfully argued book about important matters...

...But is this preference wise unless one further argues that what we are originally is sensible and good...

...The virtues discussed earlier provide some guidance, and restrict the range of reasonable choice without being irrationally absolute...

...But it is dangerous not to acknowledge the importance of the rational common sense that worries about religious excess, and not to face up to liberalism’s rational redirection of faith...

...The classics are, indeed, a good place to search for answers to our questions...

...Anderson does not focus suffi ciently on the coordination of faith with rational, natural, understanding that, in liberalism, is dominated by the reasons that issue in natural rights...

...The diffi - culty with the pluralism that Anderson admires is its kinship to the relativism he deplores...

...Some of his essays (on Pierre Manent and Bertrand de Jouvenel, for example) are better or more generous than others (on John Rawls and JeanPaul Sartre...

...Anderson brings out democratic capitalism’s virtues indirectly, largely by discussing others’ arguments...

...Anderson, perhaps, takes for granted the rationality, or at least the compatibility with reason, of the precepts of the faiths he admires...

...As he himself suggests, however, what makes civil society sensible is that it encourages responsibility, and good government requires prudence...

...My fi nal question concerns Anderson’s defense of pluralism...

...These virtues form a ground and goal for liberal democracy that is more substantive than the sometimespointless variety of pluralism, and they are naturally congruent with individual rights...

...The modest awareness of imperfection that shapes this “melancholy liberalism” contrasts with “the hubris of the secular religions,” such as communism, that believed “they had solved the ‘political problem.’” Liberalism’s two central limits are its “egalitarian spirit,” which “easily becomes subject to egalitarian overbidding,” and its “moral indeterminacy...

...Anderson prefers an “originalist” understanding of our Constitution to the “living” Constitution’s invitation to judicial legislating...

...He says little about them...

...Nor do they simply ignore the more classical dispositions of courage, justice, and moderation...

...The Declaration of Independence refers to God in several ways, as he suggests, but God is “Nature’s God...

...His greatest praise is for those who support democratic capitalism, but refl ect on its limits: “It has been a virtue of the richest currents of liberal democratic thought, from James Madison and Alexis de Tocqueville to Irving Kristol and Pierre Manent, to explore bourgeois society’s inherent limitations and failings without losing sight of its basic decency and relative justness...

...In order to see the effect of healthy liberalism on religion, you might ask what Islam would need to give up to become fully liberal...

...But without these, is not faith’s “argument” willful...

...Given Anderson’s standpoint, however, this diffi culty is less telling for him than it might be for others...

...But how, exactly, does one argue (as Anderson would wish) that a “Muslim . . . ‘concept of meaning’” that “allows me multiple wives” is wrong and does not constitute a “constitutional right” to multiple marriages...

...My disquiet centers on the signifi - cance of toleration...

...Anderson treats it primarily by mentioning economists who argue that the variety toleration encourages is good for religions because it keeps competitors on their toes...

...But we should appreciate that, in encouraging virtue, we often can work with the liberal tide, even while clearing its debris...

...It consists of three interconnected parts...

...America’s religious life is vigorous as Europe’s is not...

...How to secure this understanding within liberalism’s reasonable virtues and rights, and how to invigorate it within the accidents of our situation, are diffi cult questions, of course...

...Does this openness, then, force education and choice to be grounded in the accidents of tradition, irrationality of absolutism, or arbitrariness of pluralism...

...Is it enough, when educating students, to give them no guidance but speeches about “the incommensurability of human goods,” and the varieties of “human fl ourishing,” “political arrangements, and conceptions of the good life that human nature legitimately allows...

...Anderson discusses religion in liberal democracy at some length, with impressive sympathy and understanding...

...For anyone to ignore “theism” is to ignore something crucial to healthy democracy...

...but authors such as John Gray are wrong when they overplay the problems and sell short the immense economic achievement...

...The dislocations it causes are real, especially in its current global moment...

...Can one merely oppose faith to faith, or impose legal force...

...It is vital in reducing poverty...

...But if we cannot show what is natural and reasonable about rights—what is true about them, even if it is not the whole truth—all that remains are the arbitrary preferences and intuitions that correctly concern Anderson when he discusses John Rawls...

...Religion is compatible with liberal democracy, but it is transformed so that the elements that support democratic capitalism and liberal reason come to the fore...

...His is a conservative and pluralistic liberalism, not a simply systematic one...