James K.A. Smith Quote
In The Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin makes this point with a Tocquevillian accent: in many ways the ideal of a pluralistic liberal society has lived off the borrowed (formative) capital of illiberal (mostly religious) communities—including the family—as incubators for the dispositions of good citizenship. But insofar as both liberalism and capitalism54 tend to devour and erode just these institutions and communities, they end up being a parasite that, starved by its own hunger, consumes the host and thus engenders its own demise. This raises serious questions about the viability of pluralism from the left, which has of late exhibited neither patience nor tolerance nor humility.
In The Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin makes this point with a Tocquevillian accent: in many ways the ideal of a pluralistic liberal society has lived off the borrowed (formative) capital of illiberal (mostly religious) communities—including the family—as incubators for the dispositions of good citizenship. But insofar as both liberalism and capitalism54 tend to devour and erode just these institutions and communities, they end up being a parasite that, starved by its own hunger, consumes the host and thus engenders its own demise. This raises serious questions about the viability of pluralism from the left, which has of late exhibited neither patience nor tolerance nor humility.
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