Unlimited Sovereignty of the Individual

“We are probably the first, and we will surely remain the only, people in history to give over all elements of social life and all contents of human life to the unlimited sovereignty of the individual. … It is easy to see that, if humanity had begun its adventure by embracing such principles, neither families, nor cities, nor religious communities would ever have been created. Strangely, our regime has taken on the task of drawing support more and more exclusively from a principle upon which it happens to be impossible to found anything at all.”

Beyond Radical Secularism: How France and the Christian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge
by Pierre Manent