Persistence of the Ideological Lie

Daniel J. Mahoney is professor emeritus at Assumption University (where he taught from 1986 until 2021), senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and senior writer at Law and Liberty. He has written extensively on statesmanship, French political thought, the art and political thought of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, conservatism, religion and politics, and various themes in political philosophy. His latest book, The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, And Moderation was awarded the Paolucci Prize for Conservative Book of the Year by ISI in 2023.

In his chapter on Dostoevsky’s novel The Possessed, Daniel Mahoney writes that Dostoevsky displays the “ability to bring us back from the brink of nihilistic destruction,” and, many readers will discover, that is true of this book as well. Forceful, incisive, highly intelligent, and gracefully written, it should shape debate on our culture today.—Gary Saul Morson, Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities, Northwestern UniversityAfter 1989, as the world sought to put to rest the ideological catastrophe of the twentieth century, Dan Mahoney never stopped warning us, using his masterful command of political theory, that the nihilistic temptations of the twentieth century are permanent features of human life.  Now that the new tyranny of identity politics is upon us, we can do no better than listen intently to one of America’s most important political thinkers for guidance.—Joshua Mitchell, Department of Government, Georgetown UniversityNo one knows more about the long history of philosophical and political totalitarianism—in both its leftist and rightist manifestations—than the gifted political scientist, philosopher, and intellectual historian Daniel Mahoney. In The Persistence of the Ideological Lie, he carefully examines recent epidemics of political extremism, anti-Western historical revisionism, moral nihilism, cultural relativism, the diversity/equity movement, the 1619 project, and the woke and political correctness hysterias. The result is both an astute survey of what drives such utopianism and year-zero fantasies, and an invaluable warning to us that what ostensibly might start out as ridiculous and dreamy can become very quickly quite “a dangerous and destructive enterprise.”—Victor Davis Hanson, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, author of The Dying Citizen“The slumber of reason breeds monsters,” but what to do when the monsters are bred by the “party of reason?” This haunting question regularly crops up since the beginning of modern—that is, purportedly rational—politics. In this wide-ranging, powerful and timely book, Mahoney explores how, from the French Revolution to present-day wokism, an ineradicable totalitarian impulse suscitates ever-new ideological lies. The current one rests on a virulent mixture of moral relativism—there are no natural obligations—and moral fanaticism—the enlightened few rightly rule the benighted many. A book which forces us to wake up and think.—Pierre Manent, author of Natural Law and Human Rights