I must admit that I am fascinated by Waleed Aly’s Quarterly Essay, Time of Monsters: What future for liberalism?

According to him, the broader population at large has judged liberalism to have failed them. At its core liberalism offered the dream of progress. That the next generation would be better off than the previous generation. This is not happening, leading the population to seek alternate means to achieve these goals

Because liberalisms failures are so many and so varied, everyone can now have a legitimate gripe about one or more aspect of it – e.g. that capitalism has created huge financial inequality and caused much destruction of the natural world; the management (or mismanagement) of the COVID pandemic; the threat of mis-information spread via traditional media outlets or an ever growing, ever evolving electronic landscape with the resulting harm (and growing mistrust); the insecurity of not having an affordable, safe and stable home. We all sit on different points of the spectrum on these and many other issues, but the uniting point is that many of us feel that the promise of liberalism has not eventuated.

I would encourage you to investigate the proposition presented by Waleed and share your thoughts. His full analysis is available via The Quarterly Essay.

My initial source for this comment: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/07/waleed-aly-time-of-monsters-future-liberalism-essay

Liberalism is a supportive tool of capitalism, with its pro mixed market philosophy and emphasis on social and economic equality. In our modern mixed society we hope that through the application of liberalism, the excesses of capitalism can be fairly managed. That is increasingly been seen as illusionary as the rich get richer, and the rest can please themselves. I believe this has always been the case, but the "rest" have not had the political power to demand justice, or have simply been led by politicians who have promised much, but delivered little. Our political class at the end of the day will be sell outs to the demands of the rich and powerful within our society. That's for sure and certain.