Review of James Kalb’s book, “The Tyranny of Liberalism”
Review by Felipe Serra
“This is a book about the tyranny of Liberalism: what it is, how it comes about, what its implications are, and what to do about it.”
Like its title implies, “The Tyranny of Liberalism” points us toward the idea that Liberalism – the ideology that currently dominates mainstream Western politics and that aims towards the end all human conflict through the equal satisfaction of desires – unavoidably tends towards authoritarianism and excessive intervention in all echelons of society. This as a result of the social chaos that comes with the denying of the cultural, social and individual aspects that give human life its ultimate meaning, in an attempt to have a predictable and controlled society.
The book is divided into two parts. The first one, adequately titled “Decline and Fall”, presents a definition of Liberalism, naming its fundamental principles and the results of Advanced Liberalism – the current form of the liberal ideology as espoused by the USA and the European Union -Â and its institutions in public life. Kalb gets his main point across by indicating that Liberalism as an ideology is flawed at birth because it is mostly based on pure theory, and therefore denies human nature in an effort to have the most perfectly manageable society possible. Its most basic principles, namely the pursuit of “equal freedom” and “individual satisfaction” as ultimate standards for society are attacked relentlessly. The writer points out that these basic flaws unavoidably turn Liberalism into Advanced Liberalism, which is as powerful and branched out in all aspects of public and private life (thanks, in part, to the mass media) as it is intrusive and totalitarian in nature. The result of it can only be societal disruption, as privacy becomes a commodity, and chaos, as people lose its most basic freedoms with a State contantly enforcing new values on them.
The second part, “Up from Tyranny”, is where the real juice of the book is in my opinion, as it begins providing different alternatives to Liberalism, discarding those that do not really solve the problem (current political tendencies such as Neo-conservatism), returning to the basics (what has Liberalism taking away from us, and how can we recover it?) and then pointing out that, to replace Liberalism, we need to overcome it by looking at the past in order to retrieve the traditional aspects of life that defined and kept Western society together for centuries before the advent of Liberalism, both on a small (religion, marriage, family, home education, community work, friendship) and large scale (local government resulting in less bureaucracy, capable leadership, centralized spiritual authorities). Kalb indicates that these values permitted social harmony for most of Western history and can do so again once Advanced Liberalism collapses. He then concludes the book with a handful of tips that people can use for the defense of these aspects that in our current era are deemed, thanks to the propagandistic efforts of liberal entities, as idiotic at best, or criminal at worse.
The writer dedicates several pages to pointing the importance of these informal traditions as means that connects each of us to our own nature and to our neighbours. He also outlines the importance of religion as an unifying principle that points us towards the things that transcend our own lives and connects each of us to the whole of human society, and dedicates a fair amount of paragraphs to his thesis that the Roman Catholic Church would be the most suitable spiritual organization to provide that unity in a post-modern world.
While it may seem at first that this book is aimed towards people that are already quite aware of the failure that is our current society, and therefore are vehement disagreers, this is not quite so. The writer’s intention, as exposed by himself, is actually to get to both camps: those that are against Modern Society, and those that are mostly in favour, but are perceptive enough to realize its failure and open minded enough to be receptive towards the alternatives presented here.
Most of all, “The Tyranny of Liberalism” is an excellent introduction for those who are recently escaping the so called “modern mentality” promoted by the mass media, modern education and the vast majority of people. In order to avoid the ensuing confusion that such a change in life generates, this book can be of great help as it provides a general perspective of our current situation, and a direct course of action considering the advantages of our era, which, amongst other things, would help the reader avoid the usual pitfalls that confused dissidents sometimes adopt. Additionally, Kalb’s easy conversational style makes all of its concepts easy to grasp at once without going too deep in more complex philosophical issues that may be taxing on newbies. This book would certainly help to gain a central perspective on all the things wrong with current Western thought, in a time when most people fight over meaningless details.
In a world where Liberalism is seen as the rational result of the progress of history and that has virtually no opposition in the mainstream, provoking confusion amongst those who see that things are wrong with society at large, this book can be seen as a light in the end of a tunnel. A great introductory text to the disease of Modern Civilization.