From the always thoughtful and readable Jonathan Rauch, in Persuasion; some excerpts, though the whole thing is much worth reading:
Never in my lifetime have critiques of Locke, Smith, Mill, the British Enlightenment, and the American founding emanated from so many different quarters, attacked from so many directions, and sounded so scathing and confident. The liberal tradition has been undone by its amorality (says the right) and its injustice (says the left); it has, they charge, made society unfair, politics narcissistic, and truth meaningless.
Above all, they charge, liberalism has lost the confidence of the public—and of liberals….
[Yet] no viable system has emerged that can come close to replicating liberalism's capacity to produce knowledge, prosperity, freedom, and peace. In fact, both on its own terms and compared with all the historic alternatives, liberalism has delivered spectacular results. It is the greatest social technology ever invented, and well ahead of whatever comes second.
This paradoxical situation has me scratching my head, and I'm not alone. Why is liberalism so widely challenged and attacked, and so defensive and self-doubting, when it has so much to brag about? Increasingly, I have come to think we must look for an answer not just in liberalism's failures—though there certainly are some—but in liberals' failure of nerve….
