The Liberal Apocalypse
The Collapse of Global Liberalism and the Emergence of the Post-liberal World Order by Philip Pilkington
Polity Press, 2025
(240 pages, $18.19, paperback)
Philip Pilkington’s Collapse of Global Liberalism is an astute and quite welcome addition to a growing literature that does not predict the end of liberalism, but rather analyzes the causes and effects of its demise, which has already occurred. If Pilkington is correct in his judgment—and I find his case largely convincing—then this is better news for Christians than it might at first appear. The object of discussion here is not the policy of a particular “liberal” party as opposed to its “conservative” rival. It is not the simple antithesis of “liberalism” as opposed to communism and fascism, but rather the ideological matrix from which they all emerged.
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R. V. Young is Professor of English Emeritus at North Carolina State University, a former editor of Modern Age: A Quarterly Review, and the author of Shakespeare and the Idea of Western Civilization (Catholic University of America Press, 2022). He and his wife are parishioners at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church in Tarpon Springs, Florida. They have five grown children, fifteen grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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