But our problems are more fundamental than just bad elite behavior. “Liberalism is today in crisis,” writes Deneen, “not just because of the behavior of the new elite, but because its rise has corresponded with the attrition of institutions that benefited the lower classes while restraining the ambitious who wished to escape its restraints.” An abundance of possessive pronouns without clear referent is one of Deneen’s calling cards. But what he seems to mean is that there were once common bonds of tradition and community that both hemmed in elite ambition and provided everyday people with meaning and solidarity. Consider Sabbath laws and public prayer as examples meaningful to Deneen. Sabbath laws sacralize Sundays out of the market, shielding the working class’s time from the economic ambitions of the elite. Prayer throughout the day serves a similar, smaller function. These also bind the classes within a common belief system.
Liberalism’s secular push to free us from these moorings sacrificed their benefits for little gain. Deneen cites John Stuart Mill as one of the noxious sources for the liberal, progressive perspective. He especially condemns Mill’s concerns about “harm” and respect for “experiments in living,” which Deneen argues have become part of the HR department tyranny that our decadent elites helm. However compelling the examples—and Deneen is at his best when explicating real world examples—he provides no explanation for how Mill, an 19th century British philosopher, came to have such an overweening influence on 21st century American politics. Poverty of explanation is the rule, not the exception for Deneen.
To remedy our ailing system, Deneen suggests we need a new mixed regime: “aristopopulism.” The mixed regime of the Founding Fathers—checks and balances, Federalist 10—isn’t truly mixed. It was more like a tossed salad than a smoothie (Deneen’s metaphor, not mine), keeping all the classes separate. Rather than pitting the ambitions of the classes against each other and achieving stability through inertia, Deneen believes we can rather create a more harmonious intermingling of the high and the low that emphasizes their benefits while mitigating their deficits. This more blended regime offers neglected flyover country paternalism, noblesse oblige, tradition, and material uplift. What it offers the new elites remains unobvious, other than avoiding the danger of our “cold civil war” turning hot. Or perhaps accelerating societal decay should furnish them with the needed impetus. Whatever the case, for Deneen, the real mixed regime has never been tried in America.
However shaky the details, the gist of the argument is that America needs a regime change toward traditionalism and away from secular modernism. Deneen offers Christian democracy as we’ve seen in Europe as the solution. That looks possible for America insofar as America is a Western country, even though for Deneen, America’s founding was invariably progressive and liberal. And that’s the shell game he plays throughout the book.
Deneen argues that tradition is vital to mixing the classes, both for restraining elite ambition and preserving the dignity of the lower ranks. Without tradition, we lack context and mutual obligation. Saying that America shares in the Western tradition allows him to present his arguments as native to the American milieu without having to meaningfully engage with the American canon. We get cameos from the 17th century puritan Jonathan Winthrop, the anti-Federalist Melancton Smith, and Martin Luther King, Jr., with lip service to the Founding Fathers and Lincoln, (many of these are crammed into the last chapter) but no sustained treatment of America as a specific cultural and political formation. Deneen spends most of his time quoting from classical thinkers or from Europeans. For all his insistence on localism, nationalism, and patriotism, Deneen’s vision feels imported from abroad. Here we have a book about America’s need for so-called aristopopulism in which Henry Adams is never quoted and Andrew Jackson appears not at all. How is this possible?