Regime Change: Unpacking Patrick Deneen’s Critique of Liberalism

Garion Frankel, “Regime Change: Unpacking Patrick Deneen’s Critique of Liberalism,” The Vital Center 1, no. 1 (Fall 2023): 83–85.

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If you already agree with Deneen and are seeking intellectual validation, then Regime Change is for you. But if you are a liberal looking for someone to challenge your ideas and outlook on the world, you should look elsewhere. And if you are someone looking to learn about postliberalism, then please read Alasdair MacIntyre instead.

In Regime Change: Towards a Postliberal Future, his follow-up to Why Liberalism Failed, Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen offers his alternative to liberalism’s “soft, pervasive, and invasive progressive tyranny.” Deneen begins elucidating this alternative only on the 151st page (more than two-thirds into the book)—an “Aristo-populist,” multi-racial alliance of working-class Americans (and friendly elites) working toward the common good, which Deneen defines as “[Christian] piety, truth, equitable prosperity, and good government.” In other words, Deneen seeks “Machiavellian means for Aristotelian ends.”

The work has already received ample commentary. Reason’s Stephanie Slade attacked Deneen’s ideological incoherence; Damon Linker, writing for Quillette, noted that Deneen’s work travels far beyond his mentors’ and influencers’ arguments; and the New York Times’ Jennifer Szalai labels Deneen’s work as overzealous, overconfident, and infuriatingly vague. Concerns about Deneen the man—his personal history, his ideas, and his relationship with the so-called “New Right”—are a consistent theme throughout these reviews.

Despite these negative reactions, Deneen offers a potent critique of liberal neutrality, as understood by John Rawls and those who follow him. Rawls attempted to isolate liberalism from the good life. More simply, Rawlsian liberalism sees politics as politics and makes no judgment about what is right or good in the world.

Deneen correctly notes that without “universal appeals to justice,” toxic ideologies such as identity politics will unravel the threads of truth that bind our civilization together, and replace them with “an individual or group’s perception of offense.” Moreover, Deneen adds that a liberal, Western method of education is impossible without a shared conception of the good. As someone whose research program involves reintegrating the humanities into public education, I tend to agree.

Whether or not you agree with Deneen, however, Regime Change is not a very good work of scholarship. As a successor to Why Liberalism Failed, it fails to break any new ground, and as an original work of political theory, it is nonsensical.

Deneen’s better points are overshadowed by Regime Change’s slovenly academic scholarship. Indeed, Deneen butchers the work of the theorists he claims as influences on his Aristopopulism.

For example, Deneen argues that the Greek historian Polybius supported executive kingship in the form of the Roman emperor. Polybius died nearly a century before there even was a Roman emperor. Deneen fondly cites Alexis de Tocqueville without any recognition that the Frenchman self-identified as a liberal. (There is considerable debate regarding Tocqueville’s true ideology, but Deneen makes no mention of this before lumping him in with pre-liberal thinkers.) Edmund Burke is given similar treatment, though Deneen acknowledges that Burke was a devoted Whig. Even Karl Marx is not given proper care.

Deneen treats Aristotle most egregiously. If a reader were to pick up Regime Change prior to reading Aristotle, Deneen would have that reader believe that Aristotle was a democrat. It is basic political theory that Aristotle opposed democracy, accepted a polity of the middle class as the most stable form of government out of sheer necessity, and asserted that only a select few men with the requisite leisure would become virtuous. That said, in Politics III.11, Aristotle suggested that a large legislative body may combine the few virtues of the many while simultaneously filtering out their vices.

Deneen, however, treats this off-hand remark as an expression of Aristotle’s truth. He writes that “Aristotle acknowledged that there was a strong claim to be made on behalf of democracy—rule by the many.” A hypothetical—a mere possibility—is not a “strong claim to be made on behalf of democracy.” In fact, Aristotle’s arguments against democracy were quite similar to those of Plato, who argued that Athenian democracy was akin to anarchy, yet Deneen derides Plato and praises Aristotle.

“Deneen’s better points are overshadowed by Regime Change’s slovenly academic scholarship. Indeed, Deneen butchers the work of the theorists he claims as influences on his Aristopopulism.”

In his sloppiness, Deneen also neglects certain ideas and figures who merit more attention. The Founding Fathers are only occasionally mentioned (and Thomas Paine is not mentioned at all). The word “rights” appears on only two pages in the whole book, and one of those pages only references rights in relation to Edmund Burke’s conception of inherited rights. Legitimate disputes between “classical liberals” and “progressive liberals” are portrayed as mirages or dismissed entirely.

One cannot properly engage with American liberalism without referencing individual rights, nor can one use liberal or liberal-adjacent thinkers (like Tocqueville and Burke) to critique other liberal thinkers (like Locke, Mill, and Rawls) and then proclaim that all liberalism is dead.

Liberalism deserves better critics. Regime Change fundamentally misconstrues liberal ideas, butchers the thinkers it claims to incorporate, and makes obvious errors in the history of political thought. Frankly, it is surprising that these mistakes made it past an editor.

In sum, if you already agree with Deneen and are seeking intellectual validation, then Regime Change is for you. But if you are a liberal looking for someone to challenge your ideas and outlook on the world, you should look elsewhere. And if you are someone looking to learn about postliberalism, then please read Alasdair MacIntyre instead.

This essay is a review of Regime Change: Towards A Postliberal Future by Patrick Deenen. You can purchase the book for yourself here.