The New Dark Age

Why 'liberals' must win the culture wars. But I don't mean 'progressives'.

For a moment, I dithered. I knew that the subtitle would ‘trigger’ many conservative Christians, certainly in the United States, but also here in the United Kingdom. I knew it would cause them to take a step backward from The New Dark Age and stop some from opening it at all. But I resolved to go ahead anyway. So, there it is: ‘Why Liberals must Win the Culture Wars’.

I went ahead, I admit, partly for the sheer pleasure of confounding thought-defying ‘progressive’ critics, who’ve stuffed me into the pigeonhole labelled ‘far right colonial apologist’, to relieve themselves of the burden and risk of actually having to listen. “What? Biggar? Liberal!?” But, more seriously, I did it because liberal is what I really am. And by Christian conviction.

That, however, raises hackles on my right. For, of course, liberalism has come under sustained attack in recent years. Not just from the eminent atheist philosopher, John Gray, most recently in The New Leviathans: Thoughts after Liberalism (2024), but also from Christians such as the Roman Catholic political theorist, Patrick Deneen, in Why Liberalism Failed (2018) and Regime Change: Towards a Postliberal Future (2023).

John Gray (left) and Patrick Deneen (right)

In general, I think it best to avoid talking of ‘isms’ altogether, since it too often obscures the truth by forcing diverse historical phenomena into a single ideological straitjacket. Talk of ‘colonialism’, for example, implies a single, coherent entity, invariably of a pejorative kind—a coherent system of oppression and exploitation, which can be summed up in one word, ‘slavery’. Whereas, in fact, colonial power was not infrequently liberating: after all, the British Empire spent the second half of its life committed to ‘anti-slavery’.