Chad Liberalism
29th July 2022
There’s a weightlifting joke made famous by eight-time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman: “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-*ss weights.”
I thought of that while reading Yoram Hazony’s “Escaping Liberal Democracy,” which is full of amateur gym-bro wisdom about how America should get back in shape. But he seems to have skipped the hard work of lifting (and reading) the most important heavy books. Now, I don’t mean to suggest that one has to be an intellectual to see how our country has grown increasingly decrepit; nor am I defending credentialism. One should, however, at least be familiar with the key historical developments and major arguments about the founding and its critics before presuming to tell Americans how we should regain our political vigor.