It's more urgent and serious than we think.
Ryszard Legutko outlines the broad parameters of liberalism today, and sees it increasingly approximating the old Marxist tyrannies of the 20th century (“Why I Am Not A Liberal,” First Things, March 2020).
He explains how liberalism, touting freedom for all, has become a super-system policing attitudes and opinions, working to silence opposing views, and determined to stamp its worldview on all citizens, beginning with the youngest. Liberalism exalts the individual and his search for freedom as he defines it, but only within a larger pluralistic framework defined in anti-traditionalist terms. Liberalism is the dominant worldview of the West, and it is working by every means to marginalize, and if possible eliminate, every contrary voice and opinion. Liberalism actually destroys the concept of humanity, and of the common weal, by placing so much emphasis on the individual, and by refusing to entertain any views suggesting its own might not be the last word.
Legutko summarizes the challenge of liberalism: “The challenge of the next decade will be to break the ideological monopoly of liberalism so that thick views of the self can guide the education of future generations. Unless we succeed, we will lack the men of character we need to defend and renew the institutions that secure freedom in the West.”