What is arguably the book’s most important claim — that liberalism is beset by an insuperable tension between a conservative mass public and an insular liberal elite — is never established with a single empirical study or even a simple piece of polling data…
In Deneen’s thinking, it is axiomatic that the central divide in Western politics is between the villainous liberal elite (the “few”) and the culturally conservative mass public (“the many”). The liberal elites wish to impose their cultural vision on society and attack the customs and traditions of ordinary people; the many, who are instinctively culturally conservative, have risen under the banner of leaders like Trump to oppose them.
Except how do we know that liberals really are “the few?”
Deneen doesn’t cite election or polling data to support his theory of a natural conservative majority. Trump has never won the popular vote while on the ballot; his party performed historically poorly in two midterm elections since his rise to power. Polling on the cultural issues Deneen so cares about, like same-sex marriage, often finds majority support for liberal positions.
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While reading the book, Beauchamp emailed Deneen asking what he thought of some of Beauchamp’s reactions to his arguments. Deneen completely refused to engage:
“I’m quite certain you’re unlikely to deviate from any conclusions you’ve already settled upon, regardless of what I might try to convey in response to any questions.”
Beauchamp sees in this refusal Deneen’s revolutionary commitment to “conflict” rather than conversation with the liberal enemy. UD sees it as far more insidious, the sort of snobby/nihilistic reaction you get from a person who left a position at Georgetown University because it’s not truly Catholic and “insulated” himself (to use a word Deneen constantly uses to characterize out of touch liberal elites) at the University of Notre Dame, and who – should God grant him long life – will eventually leave Notre Dame for Ave Maria University, and then Ave Maria for a pontifical campus in Rome within walking distance of the Vatican. It don’t get no more cluelessly elite than an intellectual shut-in uniquely possessed of the truth.