TS Eliot presciently warned in his “Idea of a Christian Society” (in Christianity and Culture
) that liberalism has the capacity to turn into its opposite: “Liberalism still permeates ourminds and affects our attitude towards much of life. That Liberalism may be a tendency towards something very differentfrom itself, is a possibility in its nature. For it is somethingwhich tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, torelax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so muchdefined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, ratherthan towards, something definite. Our point of departure ismore real to us than our destination; and the destination islikely to present a very different picture when arrived at,from the vaguer image formed in imagination. By destroyingtraditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their naturalcollective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensingthe opinions of the most foolish, by substitutinginstruction for education, by encouraging cleverness ratherthan wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fosteringa notion of getting on to which the alternative is a hopelessapathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is itsown negation: the artificial, mechanised or brutalised controlwhich is a desperate remedy for its chaos.”
