The anti-liberal moment

Critics on the left and right are waging war on liberalism. And liberals don’t seem to have a good defense.

Shortly after its post-World War I creation, the foundations of Germany’s Weimar Republic began to quake. In 1923, Hitler staged an abortive coup attempt in Bavaria, the so-called Beer Hall Putsch — a failure that nonetheless turned Hitler into a reactionary celebrity, a sign of German discontent with the post-war political order.

One contemporary observer, a legal theorist in his mid-30s named Carl Schmitt, found the seeds of the crisis...