In his recent article on the Benedict Option, which I have argued in the past bears little resemblance to the historical basis it purports to stand on, Jeff Guhin puts the challenge thusly: “Liberalism has won,” he writes. “The sort of gemeinschaft for which communitarians yearn was marked by the absence of choice. People grew up amidst practices and boundaries that helped them habituate certain implicit understandings of what is good and true.”

However,

We just don’t have that anymore, except to the degree that liberalism itself is what Charles Taylor calls a moral imaginary, a way of perceiving the world that comes to feel obviously and necessarily true. Even intentional submission to another’s power—described by anti-liberal leftists like Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood—is ultimately rooted in a mature adult’s autonomous decision to do so. You might choose a more serious community—as Dreher himself has done—but you do so as a liberal who could also leave that community (even if you couldn’t leave liberalism).

Read the article “The Liberal Option’s Answer to the Benedict Option” on ethikapolitika.org.