From a book review of Conserving America? by Patrick Deneen- review by Micah Medowcroft-  Trump Didn’t Kill Conservatism in The Wall Street Journal:

The two dominant alternatives to this fixation on the present are progressivism’s focus on the future and what Mr. Deneen refers to as “nostalgism,” which “dons rose-tinted glasses in its high regard for a perfected past.” Consider, for example, the way many Republicans talk about the Reagan era. Or even the notion of “making America great again.” Such nostalgism animated much support for Mr. Trump this past year, and progressivism is easy to identify on the far left. But according to Mr. Deneen, in American politics both sides are actually liberals: classical liberals, often misnamed conservatives in the post-Cold War world, and progressive liberals. The classical liberals seek “a society of ever more perfectly liberated, autonomous individuals,” particularly in economic matters. The progressive liberals seek to build a society of “ever more egalitarian members of the global ‘community.’ ” The author believes that classical and progressive liberalism are “different sides of the same coin.”

print