Very much worth your while is Sohrab Ahmari’s piece on the rising tide of illiberalism around the world over at Commentary.

However, I would add one point that Ahmari largely ignores. While the turn towards community-centric populism, however the community is defined, is a constant in human affairs (indeed, much of Marxism and leftism in general is an intellectualization of the values of the small-group tribe). But why this turn now in the wealthiest parts of the world?

One hesitates to pronounce on such large, complicated questions, but it occurs to me that central to the increasingly decadent liberal order in the West (liberal in the old, as well as lefty sense) is a crisis of meaning. Religion, other than Islam, is incredibly feeble in Europe and decreasingly relevant in the U.S., when it’s not under explicit attack by votaries of Leftism, either in its statist or venereal sects.

Absent the traditional explanatory narrative and provider of morals, people moralize and narrativize politics. Those on their side become angels, their opponents demons. Reasoned argument collapses into anathema. Blues and Greens cry “Nika! Nika! Nika!”

The West has been soul-sick since World War I. If no remedy comes along soon, we’re done for.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.