He is a theologian who taught at Creighton University for twenty years and is now the editor of First Things, an influential journal that deals with religion and politics from a conservative point of view. Reno's answer to the question is Karl Popper, but Popper is not alone: Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and John Rawls are also on his list of intellectual malefactors. Reno does not like the free market, but, as I hope to show, there is something to be said for his book's main argument. Unfortunately, there is a problem. Reno just doesn't know enough about many of the texts he addresses, and his remarks about them often make his ignorance manifest.

Reno argues that in

the second half of the twentieth century, we came to regard the first half as a world-historical eruption of the evils inherent in the Western tradition, which can be corrected only by the relentless pursuit of openness, disenchantment, and weakening….The anti imperatives are now flesh-eating dogmas masquerading as the fulfillment of the anti-dogmatic spirit. (p. viii, emphasis in original)

Although World War II ended long ago, we must, the partisans of openness contend, continue the battle against the Axis, and the populist nationalist protests against leftist orthodoxy, from the movement led by Trump in America to that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, are wrongly taken to be recurrences of fascism. It is safe to predict that Reno would not get along well with the philosopher Susan Neiman, who wants us always to keep the dangers of Nazism in mind. (See my review of her Learning from the Germans)