Points of Crisis or, Is It All Over?

Various European democracies, and others with at least the beginnings of liberal institutions, collapsed—and yielded to fanaticism and tyranny—in the twentieth century in the wake of defeat in war, economic depression, hyperinflation, and in the face of violence from within and from without. Perhaps it is too Spenglerian to suggest that the present sources of democratic crisis—such as, no doubt among others, the growth of bureaucratic power, the erosion of free expression especially in the institutions that should foster it, and the growth of ideological tribalism and political odium—might actually bring down liberal institutions in America, or similarly elsewhere. But it might be best if these things, or at least some of them, were ameliorated, so that we won’t need to find out.