Eh?
Liberalism failed because “state of nature.” It doesn’t understand human beings or the societies they form at a core level. Primordial man never wandered around as an atomised individual in perfect freedom. He is a Great Ape that has always been social. Hierarchy and tribe is default for Homo Sapiens, not socially constructed.
Before freedom there must be order and hierarchy in the tribe, and modern liberalism has signally failed to provide that because it deems all three of those an oppressive force.
All the good it has done is usually stolen valour from near two thousand years of Christian teachings, and a thousand years of English Constitutional Heritage. And still it was doomed to fail from the moment of inception.
The human race is not to blame for Enlightenment thinkers taking Eden too literally and lacking anthropology.
Yes. Very much this. Of course,
@Iconoclast describes what the problem looks like in practice, while you outline the causes that make it so. The two observations don't really contradict one another.
I'll be the first to admit that the Ancien Régime of the West had its critical flaws and reprehenisible excesses-- most certainly towards the end. As with the Reformation, the fanatical, rabid rejection of the existing order didn't come from
nowhere. But as with the Reformation, the fact that it was an overthrow of the whole system (instead of a course-correct
of the system) meant that the cure was ultimately worse than the disease.
Liberalism is not without its virtues, either. Not all the (at-the-time) "new ideas" were intrinsically bad. If some had been adopted as part of a reform of the existing order, all would have been well. But instead, insanity took hold. I'll observe here that noted spokesman of throne-and-altar traditionalism, Joseph de Maistre, initially set out as an advocate of precisely those sensible, moderated reforms
within the existing order that I just outlined as the path of wisdom.
If the progressives hate reactionaries, well, they literally only have themselves to blame fo their very existence! The name says it all.
Reaction. Which only ever came into being because so many progressives turned out to be insane, genocidal monsters.
In this regard,
@Morphic Tide has a very valid point: the American Revolution was much more moderate in its ideals, desiring to fix corruption of the existing system first and foremost. It has escaped much madness for a long time because of this. (Note that many thinkers who straddled the line between conservatism and liberalism -- that is, those sensible proponents of moderated reform -- supported the American Revolution but rejected the French Revolution.)
However, as we see in this very thread: the base assumptions of liberalism-as-an-ideology
remain harmful, and America has not entirely escaped this harm. Consider freedom of religion, just discussed. The way this is formulated is based on the implicit premise that all religions are basically equal. But only a liberal could think that! As soon as you realise that it isn't true, you're no longer a liberal... and you'll no longer want all religions to be
treated equally. You'll want them treated according to their respective merits.
Liberalism produces societies where self-declared satanists defile the public space, and the law protects them. This is not a good thing, and it's not an approach to social organisation that can beget long-term stability. Therefore, liberalism is a slow suicide for any country. (As opposed to, say, communism or fascism-- which are likewise products of modernism, and cause a much
quicker national suicide.)
America is blessed by being less afflicted (and that
is the correct word here!) by liberal ideology than Western Europe, but it is still afflicted by it. And has been from the start. None have fully escaped the long shadows cast by the so-called Enlightenment.