THE AUTOIMMUNE STATE: How Liberalism and Secularism Turned Against Themselves

A free society is the finest polity yet devised - and it is quietly destroying itself. In The Autoimmune State, Vinamra Duvey argues that liberalism and secularism, pushed past their measure, turn against the very cohesion that made them possible. Openness without a center dissolves the identity that allowed openness to exist; neutrality that grows hostile to belief creates a vacuum that stricter creeds rush to fill. Drawing on the evidence of Europe's unintegrated enclaves, India's strained secular compact, and the ordered ascent of the Gulf states, Duvey names a disease most polite consensus prefers to leave unnamed. He engages Popper's paradox of tolerance and shows its limits, weaves in the mindset of the youngest generation, and forecasts three scenarios for the coming decade. The cure, he argues, is not less liberalism but a sustainable liberalism - open and bounded, tolerant and self-confident - that defends the conditions of its own survival.