Ross Douthat’s “The Crisis for Liberalism”
Ross Douthat’s “The Crisis for Liberalism” ( http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-crisis-for-liberalism.html?_r=2 ) ably makes the case that the “naked public square” (echoing Richard John Neuhaus from thirty-two years ago) lacks sufficient resources to resolve the crisis generated by the identity politics of the left and made evident by the results of the recent election. Lacking a national vision of a common good, a compelling sense of our place in the world, a unifying civil religion, the US is wedged between a rock and hard place. With a new administration that seems hell bent on governing as though the tattered remains of the late, great Judeo-Christian ethic is still in place, makes for a combustible situation indeed. Whether its fumes can reunite us around its largely abandoned vision of life in America is doubtful indeed. But, insists Douthat, that vision or something very like it is what has to be recovered if we are to find our to unity and purpos...