The "Post-Liberal" Order Is Probably Not Your Friend

And it probably never will be if you hate authoritarianism

I recently read a very interesting essay by essayist and journalist Tanner Greer over on his website, The Scholar’s Stage, that approached a relatively complex topic with a high degree of nuance from a more conservative perspective than my own. That topic was the rise of “post-liberalism”, something that seemed limited to a Catholic legal scholar named Adrian Vermeule about whom a fair amount has been written, as well as somewhat spoken about in a conversation I had with journalist Aaron Sibarium about a year and a half ago on History Impossible about his similar conclusions he came to regarding America’s potential “Weimarization.” However, as the COVID Years, as I’m calling them, seem to be coming to a close, the public hatred of Progressivism 4.0 and everything it represents (and who it’s represented by) has seemingly been on the rise. While most people—and I really mean most people—clearly don’t think about things like this when they just want some certainty back in their lives—jobs, getting their kids back to school, wondering why the hell we’re still forcing people to wear masks—there has been a groundswell of political thought, particularly on the internet. This groundswell of popularity actually suggests the Vermeulean “post-liberalism” has some fellow travelers, whether it’s “anti-leftist Marxists” like the psuedonymous Benedict Cryptofash, or “post-left” (i.e. disillusioned socialists, dirtbag leftists, etc) commentators like those on podcasts such as What’s Left, Low Society, and the FEDPOST, the ever-widening range of populist creators on both the left and right, and, of course the Claremont Institute and the Red Scare Podcast. This isn’t to say that all of these various groups agree on everything—they don’t—but they all seem to share one thing that Adrian Vermeule shares: a skepticism if not outright contempt for the small-l “liberal” project that’s been in place for at least three centuries. They use all sorts of terms as cudgels against this, ranging from “neoliberal” (particularly popular among the post-left and populist left and right), all the way to “Satanic” (primarily from the dissident right wing and Traditionalist-minded folks). Interestingly, they all seem to share a particular hatred of libertarians, who they see as either the cowardly refuge for conservatives who don’t have confidence in their values, or the very engine that drove the liberal order off the cliff (and neither of which is necessarily untrue, depending on who you’re talking about).

But back to the essay in question from Tanner Greer: while he remains admirably focused on the Vermeulian strain of post-liberalism—the OG, if you will—I think what he hits upon within this essay can be easily applied to most people in this constellation of “post-liberal” figures and institutions that have managed to gain more followers in the post-Biden era.

The following are some of my favorite passages from the essay:

“The political project of the ‘post liberals’ is not my own. Many of their critiques of contemporary American life and politics mirror what I have written; many of their suggestions for the future of the American right I easily endorse. But the grander their essays, the broader their harangues, the less convincing their case becomes.”

“The enemy of America’s social conservatives, both the self-declared ‘post liberals’ and the more standard vanilla variety ushered into the core of Republican politics in the ‘70s and ‘80s, is what sociologist Robert Bellah called ‘expressive individualism.’”

“Masters of fate and captains of souls. That is the choice. Humans find meaning in agency. We wish to act, not only to be acted upon. Those denied all chance to meaningfully shape the form and fate of their community—we once referred to this as ‘self government’—will seek agency elsewhere.”

“We, our parents, and our parents’ parents, have never lived outside the Kafkaesque.”

…

This brings us to the question of “realignment” (and funny enough one of the luminaries of this “post-liberal” turn, Saagar Enjeti, has a podcast called “The Realignment”; it’s quite good and I recommend you check it out). I think whatever one thinks of any of these figures I’ve described or their individual (or collective?) politics and ideas—and I have my own issues that we’ll get to—it seems almost undeniable, at least to me, that something that has, by most historical measures, only happened four or five times in United States history, is happening again. Trying to get historians to unanimously agree on any historical trend is like herding cats (just look at the contention surrounding the number of “Great Awakenings” that I’ve previously spoken about). But regardless, it’s generally agreed that the first realignment was Thomas Jefferson’s victory in 1800, thus cementing the two-party system we all know and “love,” that another followed in 1828 with the election of Andrew Jackson (leading to the first rise of the Democrats), that one followed that in 1860 with the rise of Republicanism under Abraham Lincoln, that was then supplanted in 1896 by the election of William McKinley ushering in the Progressive Era, and that was finally supplanted by the election of FDR in 1932, the era in which we still essentially live. I am not an expert by any means—as history podcasting Grand Puba Dan Carlin likes to say “I’m just a fan of history”; so too, am I—so any quibble I have with this characterization is mine and mine alone, but from the best I can tell (thanks largely to the excellent work done by my exceptionally talented comrade CJ Killmer over on the Dangerous History podcast, and with whom I’ll hopefully be discussing this trend of realignment in an upcoming special episode on both our feeds), the election of FDR in 1932 represented less a permanent reorientation and more just a conscious continuation of something already set in place twenty years prior that, thanks to the Great Depression, had a much more populist-seeming turn (putting aside the populist demagoguery of Huey Long at the time).

As CJ has laid out in his ongoing series about Woodrow Wilson—arguably the most villainous long-term political force we’ve had for over 100 years in terms of the trends he set—the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912 was something much closer to a realignment than the election of either FDR or William McKinley. McKinley certainly laid the foundations of Progressivism—especially with his Vice President, the always-fun Theodore Roosevelt—but Wilson, through his seemingly fetishistic love of “Administration” essentially bureaucratized Progressivism and gave it legs to stand on for over a century. Regardless of the political parties who held office from 1912-2016, they were all inheritors to Woodrow Wilson’s legacy and machinations. If anything, that alone smacks of meaningful realignment to me. But when you factor in the reality that Wilson is the one who essentially rejuvenated the Democratic Party after nearly a century of uselessness in the face of the juggernaut that was the Party of Lincoln (and for that matter, the insanely popular Teddy Roosevelt), only made possible by an extremely successful Third Party run in 1912 by TR and a relatively unpalatable candidate in TR’s old friend the incumbent Taft, it’s very hard to overestimate the impact a Wilson presidency would have on American politics for the next 100 years. The era may have officially begun with McKinley and TR, but it was Wilson who carved it into stone.

And that brings us to today, the year of our lord 2022. It’s unfortunately become a bit of a cliche to say that the election of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016 was merely a symptom of something greater, but honestly if it doesn’t continue to be said, all we’re stuck with is tired Hitler and Mussolini comparisons for days; in short, he represented a very real disruption to the established order, one that had arguably never been rivaled in terms of how many generations it spanned. That something greater is something I spoke of in my very first episode of History Impossible (and for which I cribbed a LOT of work from the amazing historian Niall Ferguson)—that something greater was our current populist backlash, something that instead of abating after the election of a relatively ineffective demagogue (the more polite way of saying “con man”), only seemed to intensify, starting with the COVID-fueled nihilism of summer 2020 cloaked under the moniker “Black Lives Matter”, leading to our own pathetic version of the Kapp Putsch on January 6th, and now finally landing with the trucker protests up in Canada that many south of the border have made their fight as well. There’s certainly more to come, if the lack of abatement is any indication. But what I didn’t do in my analysis is ask the important question: where does a populist backlash lead? I merely identified the trend of scapegoating—the Chinese in the 1870s, Mexicans and Muslims in 2016—but given that policy has barely moved from one administration to the next when 2021 rolled around, it really just seems to serve as evidence for the notion that Donald Trump simply put an ugly face on “business as usual.” I had missed something (as had so many, but this fool only speaks for himself).

Because, as I’ve been wont to say lately, populism is a tool. It’s not an ideology. And it’s a very effective tool, like a hammer. The thing is, once it runs out of nails, it either needs to keep hitting things—which ultimately no one really likes since it becomes increasingly scattershot—or it’s placed back in the toolbox. The question becomes: who is now holding the toolbox? That’s where the question of realignment comes in, because at the end of the day, it’s been abundantly clear that neither major party is all that interested in true, sincere, and full-throated investment in populist projects, especially not the current Biden regime and the century-plus-long legacy that informs it. It’s been recently speculated by folks like Batya Ungar-Sargon that the GOP could effectively reorient itself into being the party of the working class; I remain skeptical. While Ungar-Sargon’s head is absolutely in the right space—thinking about how this is a period of time where realignment is likely not just inevitable but the smart move for any political party facing down this populist backlash leviathan that really knows no party loyalty—I’m not convinced that the GOP wouldn’t do the exact same thing the DNC did when they were fundamentally threatened by the populist backlash represented in the form of Bernie Sanders. It’s well-trod territory, but they effectively nuked his campaign and seemingly reduced him to a neutered version of his former self when 2020 rolled around. However, if the Tea Party Affair of 2010 taught us anything, it’s that the GOP is far, far more adaptable at picking up dissidents and giving them a home. Cynical, yes, but effective. So…it’s possible. An ostensibly pro-working class GOP and elitist, over-educated, racecraft-obsessed Democratic Party could be in our future. And it’s certainly more likely as the BoomerCons begin their descent into the ground and their free marketeerism continues to lose purchase with younger conservatives, who are, by and large, more concerned about employment and culture war BS. The point is this: things can’t continue this way. The populist backlash will have to become sublimated into a greater institution (that is, unless the entire fabric of democratic society changes…and c’mon, don’t ask a cynic to believe that) and it can’t be with a figure like Donald Trump (it should have been a figure like Bernie Sanders in 2016 [something for which I still regret being wrong about at the time], but, hey, spilled milk and crying and all that).

And this is why, as much as a complete upending of the Wilsonian Order can and probably should be welcomed by anyone with a heart, the post-liberal turn that seems to really be fueling the intellectual and rhetorical side of this coming realignment could be cause for concern.

…

To be clear, as happy as I am to see any kind of radical change in the ideological bedrock, I also think those of us concerned with individual agency and liberty need to start being realistic. Populism, ultimately, has no patience for these things; individualism, self-regard, agency—all are indeed counter-productive to any political project. Solidarity in numbers, and all that. So it’s important to remember that if you're a disenchanted or disaffected American that finds warmth in the populist backlash but also believe in the importance of your own agency and liberty—which I honestly believe, perhaps naively, is how most Americans feel—you need to realize that the the post-liberal engine that seems to be driving this thing is probably not your friend. Let’s loop back to that very first quote from the essay I read that prompted this whole thing:

“Many of [the post-liberal project’s] suggestions for the future of the American right I easily endorse. But the grander their essays, the broader their harangues, the less convincing their case becomes.” [Emphasis mine]

This couldn’t have been said better. As Tanner Greer also correctly points out:

“[The post-liberals] place cherubim and flaming sword far further back in the Western past. For them, the malaise of late 20th century and early 21st century life is the logical endpoint of innovations in theory and faith that occurred centuries earlier. All post liberals treat Enlightenment liberalism as the original sin of the American project.”

That’s the key right there: the Enlightenment has always been the problem. Not the current regime. Not even the century-old Order that’s appearing to be on its way out in favor of a new one. The problem to the post-liberal camp is the very philosophical bedrock upon which this country was founded. I mean…what are we to do with claims like this? You don’t have America without these things. Yes, yes, the post-liberals might say, that’s the point. We need to reorient the entire thing. But that is, of course, if you can get a post-liberal to actually forthrightly and concisely state their positions and highlight some ideas beyond their usual first principles.

And this brings us to the main issue at least I have with pretty much all forms of post-liberalism, but particularly the ones coming from the populist or dissident right. For all the brilliant diagnoses of what ails us—and they have a lot of important and accurate and even beautiful things to say, not including those who play with wholesale contempt and rejection of the Enlightenment—they become rather cagey about what their vision for the future actually holds. If you consume any post-liberal content—however high or low quality—you’ll likely have the same experience as I have, coming back to a very familiar set of themes and even what sounds like talking points: a very firm (and sometimes almost convincing) call for us to redevelop respect traditional values (that is, things like family, community, and order and a suspicion of “liberation”), an ability to state one’s positions with confidence and have no shame when someone tries to assassinate your character for doing so by calling you a bigot of some sort, and sometimes even going so far—as the aforementioned Adrian Vermeule has done—as endorsing a vision of religious “integralism” where the state essentially becomes a vessel for the Church (a Republican voter’s worst nightmare in the election of 1960, as it happens; my mother’s father would have some words for Vermeule, to put it mildly).

The full-throated defenses (when they exist) of the working class are nice and it doesn’t take a genius to see them translated into actual policy (maybe I’m insane, but I just don’t think it’s weird to imagine the GOP supporting the creation of unions whose leadership’s social values align with the rest of the base). There also seems to be an agreed-upon notion of stronger borders in order to improve the conditions for the working class, so there’s that too. But aside from those? The specifics start to get fuzzy. And that’s where very legitimate questions—especially from cynical jerks like me—start to come up.

We want a reignition of traditional values—family, community, order. Okay, how? What makes this happen? Culture? The vaunted importance of culture is a big one, especially with the heirs to Andrew Breitbart and Steve Bannon, and it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand—whatever you think of Breitbart or Bannon, they are (well, I guess in both cases now, were) men to be taken seriously with very serious ideas. Dangerous? Well, your mileage may vary. But certainly serious. And their shared focus on culture wasn’t an accident: it was a new strategy for conservatives everywhere and a particularly interesting one. Whether Breitbart’s claims of “politics being downstream from culture” has always been the case or not is up for debate, but in the early 21st century? It should probably be carved into the side of a mountain. This is why anyone on the right who advocates for a “soft-handed approach” of sorts to the deep-seated issues of our time likes to say the words “change the culture” as if it’s an incantation. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding to how culture works. But when it comes down to it, what these “culture-first conservative” types, while intuiting, don’t seem to understand: culture is driven by taste. And while you can certainly manipulate taste in such a way that it appeals to the most amount of people possible, if you push too far, any average American would recognize it as propaganda from a mile away. One could certainly point to the propaganda being pumped out of Hollywood or any other cultural institution as evidence that it does work, but this claim falls apart immediately when you consider how much of these efforts are called out and ridiculed. YouTube may have disabled the “dislike count” on its videos, but the people have long memories and we would all do well to remember how universally reviled the Ghostbusterettes trailer from 2016 was, not to mention a litany of other examples, both on YouTube and on Twitter (and, most importantly, at the box office). The only reason people defend properties that have “gone woke” has nothing to do with them actually liking it; it has more to do with demonstrating their virtuous moral superiority to those who went out of their way to trash it. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to detect this is literally any response to a woke property backlash; it’s reactionaries fighting with reactionaries. So while there’s certainly propaganda being pumped out of Hollywood at the behest of Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiatives, it isn’t very good propaganda, is it? Not when so many millions of people tune out completely and thousands more go out of their way to point out that it is propaganda.

So culture is out. But what about laws, then; the state? How do you implement traditional values by fiat? Are you going to force people to just appreciate family? How do you do that? Overreaching punishments of familial deserters? A father stepping out on his family certainly is scum, but attempting to keep him present through coercion isn’t going to make him any better of a father or less resentful of the situation that would otherwise have incentivized his deadbeat ass to get out of dodge. In fact, it could very possibly make the situation worse; when was the last time that you saw a resentful human being treat those around him with care and love? Or what about the dreaded “enforced monogamy” that Jordan Peterson supposedly suggested? I’m sure that will work out well; sure there are millions of lonely men and women, but there are millions of men and women who get plenty of pleasure from singlehood. Ah, yes, what about state incentives to get families to have more children? We already have people looking at that, but…does that guarantee a happy and healthy family? Or just more resentment and distance within those that did it for the incentive rather than the intrinsic joy that many feel from having children?

What about community? Do you force people to stay in their communities? I mean, it’s certainly possible to do that—California sure as hell tries—but how does that guarantee community within a community? Sometimes people just don’t like each other and it has nothing to do with social media atomization or white collar alienation. It’s merely a clash of personalities. You can’t simply make people want to spend time together. Some people are natural introverts. Some people are assholes. I wouldn’t want to force anyone to interact with me who doesn’t want to; it’s supremely awkward at best. And yet we’re to believe it’ll all just work out if we “create better communal bonds.”

And what about faith? I can’t imagine anyone actually believes forced conversions work, let alone that any American with a gun to his name would tolerate that. I know that the more Traditionalist-inclined among the would-be post-liberal order are more concerned with spiritual caste-ism than with submission to any specific religious dominion, so that does create an illusion of pluralism, but what of those of us who just aren’t interested in spirituality or religion? What of deists, who worship in their own way and have no need of a church? Or Buddhists, who are really limited to either meditating on their own or joining a temple as a monk, essentially sealing themselves off from the rest of the world? Or, let’s be crazy: what about Scientologists? A total pyramid scheme in the guise of a religion, yes, but there are indeed thousands of people who treat it as their faith and as their community. Are you going to ban that from their lives? That certainly doesn’t seem to be very pro-community or pro-tradition to me.

And what about all the suspicion surrounding “liberation”? Sure, there’s plenty to say regarding liberation as rapidly shifting from literal liberation from second class citizenhood (as had been the case for the descendants of early America’s slave class for over a hundred years) toward seemingly everyone, regardless of class or caste, becoming something truly self-centered and fundamentally idiotic and narcissistic. But how do you keep someone from doing what they at least believe makes them whole? Is it a mere question of figuratively beating it out of them? Or how about literally? Or completely dismantling any institution—protected by the First Amendment that allows one to say they’re suspicious of liberation narratives, but never mind—that incentivizes self-expression?

And what of this even vaguer notion of “having confidence in positions” or needing to “stand up for conservative principles”? I’ve heard this one a lot from different sources; on podcasts, in essays, and in conversation, and it just seems strange to me. The positions held by post-liberals of any stripe seem pretty confident to me, at least in terms of what they reject; righteous anger is confidence. But this framing I keep hearing suggests that if you’re opposed to the current incarnation of late-stage progressivism, that you need to oppose it at the most absolute and fanatical level to be sufficiently confident in your own personal values; this honestly smacks of the very kind of purity testing that those of us with a brain in our heads roundly mock when we see it happen on the left. Similarly, this call for “confidence” carries with it the same zero-sum attitude held by the most dedicated of social progressives: “These claims are self-evidently true when I make them and I hold no responsibility of defending them because they’re my values.” Whether you’re talking about the notion of biological sex being oppressive or traditional values being the most important guiding force in our lives, it remains the same rhetorical dead end if you’re unwilling to entertain the notion that you might be wrong about something, simply because you just believe it. If you’re a hardliner progressive, dissent means you’re a bigot and a moral pervert. If you’re a hardliner post-liberal, dissent means you’re Satanic and, wouldn’t you know it, a moral pervert.

If you take enough of a step back to examine these positions, you can see the appeal. Personally, I may be a self-interested existentialist who doesn’t believe in god, but I do see value in traditions, whether it’s someone going to Mass every Sunday, or adhering to Ramadan, or observing the Sabbath, or simply playing weekly poker with your buddies or having a date night with your spouse; I see no reason to interfere with one person’s tradition because I think my own is better for more people. I’m wont to see opportunity in chaos, but I certainly see the value in order, especially when things start to or even simply appear to be about to break down (for example, I have no shame in admitting that I’m pro-death penalty in certain circumstances). And I certainly see value in family and community; I live in an old-world-style household of two (well two and a half) generations of immigrants. We are close-knit and the warmth and happiness and relief it gives me every day is a joy. And that’s great; despite my character that is no doubt “Satanic” in some ways to the post-liberals of the world, maybe I have a place in their new world order because I place personal value in these things.

…But that shouldn’t be any of their or anyone else’s business.

Why would I phrase it that way? Who’s saying that it is their business or that they’d like to make it so? Well, think back to the rhetorical-sounding-but-legitimately-sincere questions I posed earlier. The would-be post-liberal order wants these values to be the norm. Whether they believe “there was once a time” or not is largely irrelevant; it’s what they see as a better society for the future. All right, great. But how does one guarantee that this shift toward reigniting traditional values, confidence in positions, and so on is implemented? To wit: how does the state get involved? Regardless of the state’s value, we still have the state. These questions remain largely unanswered to the best I can tell. And when I ask myself why that might be the case, I can only arrive at one of two conclusions:

• 1. That some of these post-liberal pundits—namely those in the “post-left” circles—are simply not all that serious about changing things and just like pointing out how rotten the world is and how unfair a progressive cultural hegemony feels (and great; that's a good way to make a living and hard to argue against if you live in our culture and have eyes to see and ears to hear). They are essentially serving as an outlet for others like them who don’t like the state of affairs in which we live. Lord knows I’m among that cohort sometimes, even on my good days.

• Or 2. Some of these pundits rightly recognize that what they would have to do to impose what they want is likely just as politically and logistically unpalatable to most Americans right now as trying to create a legitimate communist utopia and are simply waiting for (and possibly trying to create) opportunities for their vision to become more palatable to more people, without taking the responsibility of outing themselves as people who, however fairly or unfairly, would be tarnished as run of the mill theocratic fascists that aim to upend the fundamental order in which America has always existed (instead of simply trying to overturn the Wilsonian Order and replace it with something better but in the same Enlightenment framework).

This isn’t to say I have nothing but contempt for the post-liberal crowd. To the contrary. It’s just frustration. Frustration because, when it comes down to it (and I essentially said this before), they have some of the most compelling criticisms of the prevailing, late-stage Wilsonian Order that our political culture finds itself in. They also seem to be the most adept at recognizing the state of affairs for what it is: that we are going through one of those rare historical moments that millions of Americans never got to see, that is, an ideological realignment. But when they begin, as Tanner Greer wrote, “to broaden their harangues”, things do indeed start to fall apart, at least for anyone who values, yes, liberation and individual agency and, more pointedly, anyone who is skeptical of any worldly claims of utopia. Because when it comes down to it, post-liberalism, at least in all the forms I’ve seen it take, is utopian. It concerns itself with matters of the soul, just as modern Antiracism does; in other words, it concerns itself with people’s thoughts and motives and hopes to find a way to mold them into something they see as righteous and whole.

Again, it could be that many of these people are simply frustrated with the state of affairs, and that’s fine. They provide a short-term service of psychological and emotional catharsis for other people frustrated with late-stage progressivism. But those who are serious about affecting “post-liberal” change at this scale while perhaps being the best at criticizing what we are currently stuck with, are not the people most Americans would want to take over once the current regime is ousted; we like our thoughts and motives to at least feel like our own and adhering to a broad-yet-still-specific set of values that we may not want or appreciate in the exact same way as those who sell them is nothing more than garden variety coercion into social conformity. An overdue realignment is certainly ideal, but not when it merely replaces one socially authoritarian order with another.