We can trace the current madness of modernity to many post-Christian philosophers, but it is without question that a Hobbesian understanding of "freedom" and "liberty" dominates our current understanding:
Thus, while we all desire to exist, what any one of us wants to exist for or wants out of existence can only be specified by the individual. The happiness of each individual thus depends upon his getting what he wants, and this is related to his power...Such power is the basis for what Hobbes believes is rightly called freedom.
This sets the basis of modern liberalism. Having rejected the classical understanding of reason, essence and telos, the only standard for "good" and "evil" are individual preferences and since all preferences are equally preferences, all preferences are morally equal. The liberal understanding of freedom was enshrined into the United States Constitution by Justice Kennedy:
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
Now this is certainly a conception of the good and how politics ought to be done, but it isn't neutral and it isn't anti-authority, since the nature of government is authoritative discrimination. This understanding of the good leaves no room for the theological, cardinal and capital virtues. In fact any opinion that there is an external and objective criteria for goodness will be deemed 'bigoted', 'homophobic', 'transphobic', ‘racist’ or some other derogatory name. The only religion the new liberal order will tolerate is a stripped down religion that is not concerned with matters of truth, objective good and evil or the transcendent. In other words, a religion that is one personal preference from an infinite set of preferences.
The modern liberal framework thus makes rational dialog impossible since there is no external reality or telos for you and I to reason about. Each individual has their own 'lived experience' that no one else can question. These 'lived experiences' are non overlapping so essentially each individual is a demigod in his own personal sphere. It is 'bigoted' or 'judgmental' to question or critique anyone's 'lived experience'. Diversity and inclusion is all we have left. Unfortunately, mainstream conservatives have largely accepted this liberal understanding of freedom thus replacing the traditional Christian and American understanding of liberty with hedonism and licentiousness. Liberty in the American tradition and greater Western tradition is distinct from the unrestrained freedom of liberalism. Our Founding Founders understood the distinction:
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
George Washington
Emigrants will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams
In the greater Western tradition, liberty is understood as the freedom to do what ought to be done; it's the pursuit of the theological, cardinal and capital virtues and freedom from our base animal desires:
Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.
As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.
The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to "the slavery of sin."
Freedom makes man responsible for his acts to the extent that they are voluntary. Progress in virtue, knowledge of the good, and ascesis enhance the mastery of the will over its acts.
The Democrat party has an inverted view of morality, but they also have a clear vision of politics and culture rooted in 'antiracism', 'equity', 'diversity', 'inclusion' and free choice as the ultimate arbiter of this false morality. They obtain power in the attempt to realize this vision. Conservatives and Republicans, on the other hand, have forgotten what politics and government is. They have become repulsed by power in the abstract, focusing on policies and procedures independent of a coherent vision of society. Lacking a clear vision and goal, once in power they accomplish absolutely nothing because they have completely neutered themselves. Meanwhile, cultural Marxism continues to consume everything it touches. Conservatives and Republicans must reject this modernist understanding of liberty and regain a more traditional understanding of government and the common good. It is only with a clear vision of politics and culture that we can begin to defeat the cultural Marxist left. America is in need of a complete paradigm shift.