America’s Liberal Reckoning — Fareed Zakaria and Patrick Deneen: A Munk Debate at 92NY

Americans voted for change. But what kind?

Democrats have won control of Congress. But a rejection of the party in power is not necessarily an endorsement of the alternative. What did voters reject — and what are they asking for now? Has anything fundamentally changed about the crisis facing American democracy?

Fareed Zakaria and Patrick Deneen meet at 92NY for America’s Liberal Reckoning, a Munk Debate on whether America’s founding commitments to individual rights, free expression, and limited government can answer the country’s discontent — or helped create it.

Join us as the Munk Debates, Toronto’s renowned forum for substantive and fearless public debate, come to New York City for the first time, with longtime moderator Rudyard Griffiths presiding.

The motion: Be it resolved, liberalism has failed America.

Arguing for the motion, Notre Dame political philosopher Patrick Deneen, author of Why Liberalism Failed and Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future, contends that liberalism’s failures grow out of its successes. By putting individual autonomy above all else, he argues, it has weakened families, communities, and the institutions that give life meaning — while concentrating power in corporations, bureaucracies, and a professional elite. For Deneen, America needs to move beyond liberalism.

Arguing against the motion, CNN anchor, Washington Post columnist, and international bestselling author Fareed Zakaria maintains that liberalism’s principles remain essential to America’s future. Individual rights, free expression, free markets, and democratic institutions have delivered freedom and prosperity while allowing people with profoundly different beliefs to live together. The answer, he argues, is to renew those commitments.

After the votes, hear the arguments — with two leading thinkers debating what America should do next.