Roger Partridge at Persuasion:
Every political tradition faces the question of what constitutes a good life. But only liberalism struggles so visibly to offer a straightforward answer. Authoritarians promise order and national greatness. Socialists promise equality. Post-liberal writers promise meaning and belonging through restored religious and civilizational authority—a life ordered to faith, family, and place.
Liberalism alone points nowhere in particular. Its answer—freedom—tells you what to protect, not what to do with it. Yet that silence is not emptiness. It reflects a wise limit: no one can know in advance the forms a flourishing life will take.
That beguiling silence takes one only so far, however. And in an era when liberalism is under assault from all directions, a more muscular liberalism may be called for—one that speaks up and claims what it is, or at the very least forthrightly articulates its vision of the plane on which a good life may take place.
More here.
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