The book is structured as a series of potted biographies of intellectuals Ahmari holds up as defenders or exemplars of traditional values. But he mostly uses them as foils for what he imagines to be the basic ideas and worldview of liberalism.

A biographical portrait of C. S. Lewis, for example, attacks the straw man of a narrow scientism, not in the ideas of an actual person, but in the ideas of a fictional villain in one of Lewis' lesser-known novels ("Out of the Silent Planet").

Likewise, Ahmari uses Hans Jonas, a 20th century scholar of Gnosticism, as his foil against German philosopher Martin Heidegger. But how is it that Heidegger is supposed to represent the philosophical outlook of liberalism? He infamously joined the Nazi Party in 1933, then after World War II became one of the progenitors of the postmodernist school that serves as a philosophical inspiration for the contemporary illiberal left.

In a chapter on whether it is possible to have "spiritual" values and find meaning in life without traditional religious rituals, Ahmari takes as his foils a girl who works at a yoga studio and an actress who tells a reporter, "I cleanse with Dead Sea salt baths and other herbal healing baths. I love nature and herbs; they are the magic healers of the earth and connect us to the spiritual."

I like making fun of fuzzy-headed New Age types as much as the next guy, but I also recognize that it is a very, very easy thing to do and not much of an answer to those of us who find our nonreligious spirituality, say, at the opera house instead of the yoga studio. (For that matter, it also is glibly dismissive of yoga, which is actually rooted in ancient Hindu spiritual traditions--which apparently are not among the rituals or traditions Ahmari wishes to defend.) It is easy to describe the liberal advocacy of personal autonomy as a defense of thoughtless, fleeting whims and "appetites" if these are the only examples you choose to recognize.