“Liberalism was founded as a revolutionary philosophy. When it fell into decadence, it examined itself, subverted itself, and became once again a revolutionary faith.” — Adrian Wooldridge
We’ve lost our revolutionary center. At least according to Adrian Wooldridge, the distinguished British political writer. That revolution, Wooldridge insists, is the genius of liberalism — the radical eighteenth-century ideology that shaped the modern world. Today, “liberalism” has become conservative, perhaps even reactionary, in its senescent infatuation with cultural identity. Meanwhile, the biggest threat to liberal individualism is big tech: fragmenting attention, spreading misinformation, manipulating choices through algorithms designed to excite emotion rather than inform reason. Rather than making us geniuses, Silicon Valley is turning all of us into idiots.
To the ramparts then, Wooldridge pronounces. Liberals need to seize back the revolutionary center. Or, as Wooldridge, a Fellow of All Souls, would spell it, centre.
Five Takeaways
• Erasmus and the Liberal Way of Life. Liberalism begins not as ideology but as a way of living — a middle path between fanatical certainty on both sides. Erasmus: read books, drink wine, have conversations, don’t bully people to adopt your faith. When liberalism became purely a political philosophy, it lost this sense of liberalism as a way of life.
• Bobo Orthodoxy and Its Wounds. Maximum individual freedom in the marketplace and personal conduct; no judgementalism on lifestyle choices; immigration as ipso facto good. It did a great deal of good. But it also created problems it couldn’t see. In Britain: the establishment’s inability to confront the grooming gangs, because its multiculturalist assumptions made it terrified of accusations of racism.
• Big Tech Is a Bigger Threat Than Putin. Putin is a dictator; that system will eventually collapse. But big tech is dismantling liberal individualism from within — deliberately fragmenting attention, spreading misinformation, manipulating choices through algorithms designed to excite emotion rather than inform reason. These companies need to be broken up. Not on socialist grounds. On liberal ones.
• Liberalism as Senescence. The 2024 election: Biden too old to lead; Harris an affirmative action candidate; Pelosi and the liberal establishment imprisoned by its own orthodoxy. No blueprint. No new ideas. The last time British liberalism looked this dead was the 1890s. Then Churchill, Lloyd George, and Asquith arrived with a new programme.
• Save Capitalism from Itself. Wooldridge’s prescription: Teddy Roosevelt and Louis Brandeis. Break up vast conglomerations of economic power. Tax inherited wealth. Recreate conditions for a mass middle class. Brandeis: if people can buy votes, you can’t have democracy. Reform capitalism on liberal principles — not to destroy it, but to make it the best version of itself.
About the Guest
Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist at Bloomberg Opinion and the author of The Revolutionary Center: The Lost Genius of Liberalism (Pegasus Books, 2026), The Aristocracy of Talent, and Capitalism in America.
References
The Revolutionary Center: The Lost Genius of Liberalism by Adrian Wooldridge (Pegasus Books, 2026)
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow
Chapters:
00:00:31 Are we all liberals swimming in the same water?
00:02:11 Putin and Xi: liberalism’s first articulate opponents in decades
00:03:02 The revolutionary center: a contradiction in terms?
00:05:23 Is Wooldridge a tech bro?
00:06:35 Meritocracy captured by plutocracy
00:08:58 Mill, Bentham, and the utilitarian foundation
00:14:54 Erasmus: the first proto-liberal
00:17:37 French sad liberalism: Tocqueville, Constant, Aron
00:20:33 Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed
00:26:51 Keir Starmer and the senescence of the liberal center
00:27:40 Bobo orthodoxy: how it worked and where it failed
00:35:34 Big tech dismantling the individual from within
00:40:29 Teddy Roosevelt, Brandeis, and reforming capitalism
00:43:53 Biden and Harris: liberalism as senescence
00:49:22 Bill Clinton, Churchill, Lloyd George: when the center revived