"Has Composed with Our Liberal Values Before and Can Revive Our Politics Again"

"Dating to early Renaissance Florence, its most influential exponent was Niccolò Machiavelli, whom Brooks, channeling Deneen, accuses of leading modern political thinkers to 'reject the classical and religious idea that people are political and relational creatures' and to decide that 'you couldn't base a system of government on something as unreliable as virtue.'
"But the essence of Machiavelli’s political thought is the opposite: He advocated republican government, which depends on citizens motivated precisely by virtue to look beyond their private, self-centered interests. In fact, the premises underlying the republican credo come ultimately from the ancient Aristotelean conception of the human being as a 'political animal,' whose highest interest was realized in participatory self-rule."

Win McCormack at the New Republic challenges the idea that liberalism was "the founding creed of the United States."

Park MacDougald at New York reviews Patrick J. Deenen's Why Liberalism Failed.

And Andrew Sullivan at New York contrasts Deenen's views to those of Stephen Pinker.