J.S Mill famously cautioned against ‘leaving off thinking’ about those ideas we consider most fundamental. This paper argues that contemporary political theory has largely left off thinking regarding the liberal democratic paradigm. While the concept of democracy is recognized to be ‘essentially contested,’ liberal democracy in its status as a political starting point is treated as incontestable – a ‘boundless web’ where distinct and often conflicting values are subsumed into a singular, self-evident good. By analyzing the underlying assumptions of prominent liberal-democratic justifications, I demonstrate how a failure to question the orthodoxy of the liberal democratic paradigm weakens its defense. Treating liberal democracy as a political theory of everything rather than a contingent and mutable arrangement of values, leaves liberal theory normatively ill-equipped to respond to its internal crises and external challengers. Such critical reflection is all the more important at a time when liberal and democratic values are increasingly under threat. This is not a call to move 'beyond' liberalism, but an internal critique suggesting that the robust justification of liberal and democratic values requires a shift away from treating the paradigm as the self-evident beginning and end of legitimate political imagination.