Part of moving toward a post liberal age is recognizing that while liberalism's initial appeal was premised upon laudatory aspirations, its successes have often been based on a disfigurement of those aspirations. . . . Today we consider the paramount sign of the liberation of women to be their growing emancipation from their biology, which frees them to serve a different, disembodied body–"corporate" America–and participate in an economic order that effectively obviates any actual political liberty. Liberalism posits that freeing women from the household is tantamount to liberation, but it effectively puts women and men alike into a far more encompassing bondage.

Of course, equal pay for equal work. That's just basic justice. But if the fundamental Neoliberal system is unhealthy for the soul, isn't the bargain rather like demanding the devil pay you a thousand dollars for your soul rather than a hundred? (See also "Rural vs Urban and Our Techno Capitalist Future".)

Liberalism arose by appeal to an ennobling set of political ideals and yet realized new and comprehensive forms of degradation. Put less charitably, the architects of liberalism intentionally appropriated widely shared political ideals and subverted them to the advantage of those most capable of benefiting from new definitions of liberty, democracy, and republicanism. Building on liberalism's success means recognizing both the legitimacy of its initial appeal and the deeper reasons for its failure. It means offering actual human liberty in the form of both civic and individual self-rule, not the ersatz version that combines systemic powerlessness with the illusion of autonomy in the form of consumerist and sexual license. Liberalism was both a boon and a catastrophe for the ideals of the West, perhaps a necessary step whose failures, false promises, and unfulfilled longings will lead us to something better. 

From Why Liberalism Failed, Yale University Press, 2018, pp. 186-88)

Deneen understands the problem, but unlike most conservatives, he also understands that we have to move through the limitations of Liberalism by learning from them. His analysis of the degradation of the Western understanding of 'freedom' as unconstrained appetite is exactly right, and that degraded idea of freedom is at the heart of what ails us. We have no way of critiquing it because central to the liberal ethos is a refusal to be judgmental about how others use their 'freedom' so long as they don't physically harm others.

But the problem lies in that unconstrained appetite as it manifests in the power fantasies of a Bezos, Zuckerberg, Walton, etc, is something that Liberalism basically admires and celebrates. Neoliberal elites like the Clintons and Obama (or Biden, Booker, Harris, and most of the Dem field) want to soften the hard edges, but they think that the system itself is just fine.

Marxists don't celebrate it, but most Americans are allergic to Marxist rhetoric and thinking. There should be a critique that appeals to basic American common sense and common decency that could build a consensus to push back against it. I think Elizabeth Warren comes closest to using that kind of language, but I think she scares too many Democratic elites who benefit from the current Neoliberal arrangements. We'll see. But I fear too many Democrats see Trump as an aberration rather than as a symptom of the underlying disease, a disease that can be cured only by a positive or constructive radical intervention of some kind. Electing Trump was an attempt at such an intervention, but it was a negative and destructive one. 

In any event, as I suggested in my post last week, I think understanding a kind of dialectical movement working in history gives us a clue about how to at least think about and work for a healthy post-liberal synthesis. Trump/Bannon nationalism is a regressive reaction to the failure of liberalism–there is no grace in it, only resentment. A genuine dialectical movement forward has to have something truly inspiring or ennobling about it–in other words it has to be at least in some degree inspired by grace.