In the article Liberal democracy and the costs of consent, Benjamin Barber sufficiently analyzes the foundations of many liberal thinkers. Barber indicates how the classical sense of liberalism is vulnerable to “the most devastating political pathology of modernity: deracination” (p. 56). Barber also recognizes the drawbacks that liberalism has developed since it evolved as a political ideology. Barber effectively articulates liberals' ideal development of governmental authority from the outset, and further dismantles the concept of consent as the most crucial, restrictive, and stabilizing element of liberal ideology. Barber notes that Tocquville observed that there is less need for consolidation in religions. , because it is in anarchic freedoms that societies are most structured. However, the virtues of liberalism affirm that "the wall between Church and State, the tolerance of contradictory confessions, the recognition of uncertainty, even skepticism, in public thought could only further undermine the religious principles of which they needed” (p. 54). Collective autonomy slowly disintegrates in liberalism, but liberalism provided a sanitation system for individuals and their property. By defending to the end the individual and uprooting through the composition of the liberal ideal, he engendered a modern woman and man who "live in one ear after virtue, after God, after nature, an era which offers neither comfort nor certainty. Freedom was won by a merciless severing of bonds and an uprooting of human nature from its natural, historical, and divine foundations” (p. 56). Well-established shifts in human nature tend to be overlooked by individuals who take advantage of liberalism for...... middle of paper ......cipation toward democracy, which contains "constant activity, incessant will and endless interaction with other participants in search of common ground for a common life” (p. 64, ¶ 3). The goal of participation is to establish public consciousness, which requires participation in public discourse as well as public action in the name of developing public products. Participation causes an individual to speak using we language, as opposed to I, which is the language of consent. A participating citizen is someone who has malleable characteristics, such as transitioning from single to spouse to parent. Participatory politics is a wise way to understand the association that can be developed between an individual and a community, as well as the means to integrate this partnership. Works CitedBenjamin Barber, Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent