In the article Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent, Benjamin Barber sufficiently analyzes the foundations of many liberal thinkers. Barber highlights how vulnerable the classical sense of liberalism is to “modernity's most devastating political pathology: deracination” (p. 56). Barber also recognizes the disadvantages that liberalism has developed since it evolved as a political ideology. Barber effectively expresses liberals' ideal development of governmental authority from the outset, and dismantles the concept of consensus as the most crucial, restrictive, and stabilizing component of liberal ideology. Barber notes that Tocquville observed that there is less need for consolidation in religions, because anarchic freedoms are where societies are most structured. Yet the virtues of liberalism state that “the wall between church and state, the tolerance of conflicting confessions, the recognition of uncertainty, even skepticism, in public thought could only further undermine the religious principles it needed” (p. 54). Collective self-government is slowly disintegrating in liberalism, however, liberalism has provided a healthcare service to individuals and their property. Defending the individual to the end and eradicating it through the composition of the liberal ideal, it has generated a modern woman and man who "live in an ear according to virtue, according to God, according to nature, an era that offers neither comfort nor certainty. Freedom was won through the ruthless severing of bonds and the uprooting of human nature from its foundations in the natural, the historical, and the divine” (p. 56). The shift in deep-rooted human nature tends to be overlooked by individuals who benefit from liberalism for... middle of paper ......participation in democracy, which contains “constant activity, incessant will, and endless interaction with other participants in search for common bases for common life” (p. 64, ¶ 3). The goal of participation is to establish a public mindset, which requires participation in public discourse and public action in the name of developing public products. Participation causes an individual to speak using the language we, as opposed to the I, which is the language of consensus. A participating citizen is an individual who has malleable characteristics, such as the transition from bachelor to spouse to parent. Participatory politics is a sensible means of understanding the partnership that can be developed between an individual and a community and the ways in which such a partnership could be integrated. Works Cited Benjamin Barber, Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent