Yascha Mounk’s new book “The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time” arrives at a crucial juncture for American liberalism. In this timely and incisive work, Mounk confronts the rising tide of identity politics, tracing its evolution from a movement for justice and equality into a divisive force that threatens to fragment the very liberal order it once sought to perfect.

At the heart of Mounk’s argument lies a deeper critique of contemporary liberalism — one that mirrors a larger ideological shift, which I'll call “gnostic liberalism.” This mutation within liberal thought has reshaped the American political landscape, unmooring liberalism from its core principles of individual liberty and pluralism, reorienting it toward a radical vision of societal transformation.

Mounk’s diagnosis of identity politics illuminates the ways in which the movement has deviated from its original aims. Initially focused on achieving legal equality and remedying historical injustices, identity politics has since morphed into an ideology that prioritizes group identity over the individual and reduces political legitimacy to personal experience.

This shift, Mounk argues, undermines the very universal principles that have long defined the liberal tradition — principles such as equality under the law and the moral worth of every individual, irrespective of group affiliation. In its place, identity politics substitutes a worldview that valorizes subjective experience and pits competing identities against one another in an endless struggle for recognition and power.

This is where Mounk’s........

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