Just wanted to thank you for this post. It made clear and accessible some trends in thought that I haven't put together, and things I have read with things I haven't read.
The world is too big and simultaneously interconnected, countries are too diverse along numerous axes, governments too large and corporate multi-nationals too wealthy to have anything like liberalism anymore. Liberalism worked fine among British and Continental bourgeois and yeomen in their homogenous nation-states, nestled firmly in the bosom of Christendom.
Not even the liberals embrace liberalism. No liberal argues for unqualified freedom of association or that the government should stick with maintenance of the very few truly public goods. No liberal argues for genuine free trade, as in it's none of your business if I get my AK47 and my LNG from Russia. Nobody in my lifetime ever discussed a government agency dedicated to battling "misinformation" until we got lots of women and several prominent Easter Europeans in the national security bureaucracy. "'Marketplace of ideas?' You must be #literallyHitler!"
Where were the liberals when governments shut down a third of the economy and nobody even got a vote? Where are the liberals when parliamentary democracies pretend that the second largest party doesn't exist and form coalitions nobody voted for? Where are the angry speeches condemning the Romanian Supreme Court for nullifying elections and political candidates?
If even (and I'd argue, especially) the self-described liberals aren't playing by the liberal rulebook, then I'm sure as hell not. This actually keeps things a lot more honest.
Post liberalism is pretty much staying silent and then appeasing and coddling strong men, like President Erdogan while Turkey steams furiously towards dictatorship from competitive authoritarianism. Still waiting for a word from JD Vance or Marco Rubio about the virtues of free speech a la Romania😁
I'd add that Turkey has always been more Oriental than Occidental. They joined NATO under the cosmopolitan and secularist Bayar to keep them out of the Soviet orbit but as Turkey regresses to its historic mean this could become problematic.
Oriental or Occidental (btw, are you an Orientalist?), here we are the U.S. and E.U. are lining up at Ankara Airport to get the approval of Turkey for Black Sea ceasefire, in Syrian Republic or in Somalia: 'Somalia sacks defence minister amid US pressure over his Turkey ties'. While you are trying to defend the Trump Admin., here you are in the same bed with Muslim Brotherhood, appeasing them. In regards to Turkey, I see that you are assuming much and know even less.
The idea that the US government should be on a continuous Trotskyite crusade for liberalism is inconsistent with US republican principles and the Westphalian order. Probably, they see things in the intelligence briefings that convince them to stick with Erdogan over whoever else emerges in increasingly retrograde and Islamist Turkey.
Romania as a smaller, weaker country just doesn't come up, other than to illustrate that Europe's governing elites do not see themselves as accountable to their own citizens and, again, inimical to American republican values.
You are not reading the international context correctly, the U.S. does not have the luxury of switching sides if proping up Erdogan doesn't work. And that is exactly what Witkoff, Trump's envoy to Middle East did two days ago: 'The president had a great conversation with Erdogan a couple of days ago. Really transformational, I would describe it," Trump's special envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff said in an interview with right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson'. No one is asking for support from this Admin. other than the strong men of the world. Rejoice!
As per the comparisons between Romania and Turkey, you are obviously admitting the hypocrisy of the Administration due to mitigating circumstances.
Post liberalism would appear to be rising esp. with stuff like jd Vance arguing with Pope Francis about what ‘ordo amoris’ means. i.e. the wrestling between the temporal authority and the spiritual authority is what the Catholic post liberal thought is all about. The most substantial intellectual contributions in recent years have been made by Waldstein and vermeule, who aren't even mentioned
It didn’t fail? …it just expired (on contact with the e-world or given internal presumptions just outed itself dissolving in a post-globalizing re-ordering?
This is a well-written article but the hysteria over a more “authoritarian” turn by post-liberals is unwarranted; it’s certainly not “laughable” as you say. Lest we forget the 1,500 year legacy of Byzantine Christendom under the auspices of a Christian emperor. A return to a more unitary executive power is in fact “right and just.” We can longer keep pulling at the seams every four years while never advancing forward with a United vision whereas countries like China and Russia are moving in unison to more productive ends.
Good piece. The tyrannical turn taken by the authoritarian post-liberals is nothing more than the Tocqueville effect. Christians in the west have never had it so good (if you count the colored ones... not just the privileged white ones), but in true wilderness fashion, we grumble for meat, and are ready to rebel and set up our own gods, right on the heels of our deliverance. Dreher pointed out that we've not been catechizing well enough... and this prophecy is borne out in how we turn to the State, not God, to solve our perceived woes.
Christians have never “had it so good” is the inane conception of “GDP NUMBER GO UP…ALL IS GOOD!” Leaving the economics of the present aside, which have been in STEEP decline, young Christians in this country have never been more isolated, depressed, unhealthy, born into broken and spiritually impoverished homes (the legacy of the Boomers) as they are now. The social fabric is ripped to shreds and there’s not enough elder millennials or boomers helping to put the pieces back together, which starts with securing a stable family and home life for our kids.
Americans don't learn unless we wreck everything first. Our boomer president will put the coup de grace on our floundering economy in his attempt to secure us; then the kids can pick up the pieces. Maybe they'll repent, maybe they won't. But boomers didn't put guns to the heads of the gen xers. et. al. to force them to abandon their wives and kids like they did. They made those choices on their own. The sons will be punished for their own sins, not the sins of their fathers. Ezekiel 18:20
It is not just that post-liberalism has failed, Western culture altogether has failed.
Sinners who are by self-definition entirely God-less inevitably create hell on earth especially as there are now 8 billion of us and we have the powerful technology so to do.
Put in another was the wages and business of sinners is death.
Western man (in particular) has always been deeply psychotic. In his book Columbus & Others Cannibals Jack Forbes called this syndrome the Wetiko dis-ease or psychosis.
This reference describes the nature of the Wetiko psychosis.
It could be argued that the Orange Oaf (aka Trumpzilla) is the leading edge vector of this collective psychosis. He is a religiously and culturally illiterate nihilistic barbarian, a pathological liar and a life-time professional grifter.
It is said that a fish rots from the head down. Using that as a metaphor a similar process occurs in all corporations of whatever size - political, business and sporting clubs - the rottenness percolates all the way down to the shop floor.
What therefore happens, and is indeed happening, when the head (Trump) of the collective US body-corporate is rotten to the core.
Great piece Matt! I came across it because it was mentioned by Adrian Vermeule. You have some interesting readers :)
Just wanted to thank you for this post. It made clear and accessible some trends in thought that I haven't put together, and things I have read with things I haven't read.
The world is too big and simultaneously interconnected, countries are too diverse along numerous axes, governments too large and corporate multi-nationals too wealthy to have anything like liberalism anymore. Liberalism worked fine among British and Continental bourgeois and yeomen in their homogenous nation-states, nestled firmly in the bosom of Christendom.
Not even the liberals embrace liberalism. No liberal argues for unqualified freedom of association or that the government should stick with maintenance of the very few truly public goods. No liberal argues for genuine free trade, as in it's none of your business if I get my AK47 and my LNG from Russia. Nobody in my lifetime ever discussed a government agency dedicated to battling "misinformation" until we got lots of women and several prominent Easter Europeans in the national security bureaucracy. "'Marketplace of ideas?' You must be #literallyHitler!"
Where were the liberals when governments shut down a third of the economy and nobody even got a vote? Where are the liberals when parliamentary democracies pretend that the second largest party doesn't exist and form coalitions nobody voted for? Where are the angry speeches condemning the Romanian Supreme Court for nullifying elections and political candidates?
If even (and I'd argue, especially) the self-described liberals aren't playing by the liberal rulebook, then I'm sure as hell not. This actually keeps things a lot more honest.
Post liberalism is pretty much staying silent and then appeasing and coddling strong men, like President Erdogan while Turkey steams furiously towards dictatorship from competitive authoritarianism. Still waiting for a word from JD Vance or Marco Rubio about the virtues of free speech a la Romania😁
I'd add that Turkey has always been more Oriental than Occidental. They joined NATO under the cosmopolitan and secularist Bayar to keep them out of the Soviet orbit but as Turkey regresses to its historic mean this could become problematic.
Oriental or Occidental (btw, are you an Orientalist?), here we are the U.S. and E.U. are lining up at Ankara Airport to get the approval of Turkey for Black Sea ceasefire, in Syrian Republic or in Somalia: 'Somalia sacks defence minister amid US pressure over his Turkey ties'. While you are trying to defend the Trump Admin., here you are in the same bed with Muslim Brotherhood, appeasing them. In regards to Turkey, I see that you are assuming much and know even less.
The idea that the US government should be on a continuous Trotskyite crusade for liberalism is inconsistent with US republican principles and the Westphalian order. Probably, they see things in the intelligence briefings that convince them to stick with Erdogan over whoever else emerges in increasingly retrograde and Islamist Turkey.
Romania as a smaller, weaker country just doesn't come up, other than to illustrate that Europe's governing elites do not see themselves as accountable to their own citizens and, again, inimical to American republican values.
You are not reading the international context correctly, the U.S. does not have the luxury of switching sides if proping up Erdogan doesn't work. And that is exactly what Witkoff, Trump's envoy to Middle East did two days ago: 'The president had a great conversation with Erdogan a couple of days ago. Really transformational, I would describe it," Trump's special envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff said in an interview with right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson'. No one is asking for support from this Admin. other than the strong men of the world. Rejoice!
As per the comparisons between Romania and Turkey, you are obviously admitting the hypocrisy of the Administration due to mitigating circumstances.
Post liberalism would appear to be rising esp. with stuff like jd Vance arguing with Pope Francis about what ‘ordo amoris’ means. i.e. the wrestling between the temporal authority and the spiritual authority is what the Catholic post liberal thought is all about. The most substantial intellectual contributions in recent years have been made by Waldstein and vermeule, who aren't even mentioned
A system is what it does. Hence the disillusionment
It didn’t fail? …it just expired (on contact with the e-world or given internal presumptions just outed itself dissolving in a post-globalizing re-ordering?
This is a well-written article but the hysteria over a more “authoritarian” turn by post-liberals is unwarranted; it’s certainly not “laughable” as you say. Lest we forget the 1,500 year legacy of Byzantine Christendom under the auspices of a Christian emperor. A return to a more unitary executive power is in fact “right and just.” We can longer keep pulling at the seams every four years while never advancing forward with a United vision whereas countries like China and Russia are moving in unison to more productive ends.
Ah yes. More dicktater like Commie China or War Crime Russia…
Good piece. The tyrannical turn taken by the authoritarian post-liberals is nothing more than the Tocqueville effect. Christians in the west have never had it so good (if you count the colored ones... not just the privileged white ones), but in true wilderness fashion, we grumble for meat, and are ready to rebel and set up our own gods, right on the heels of our deliverance. Dreher pointed out that we've not been catechizing well enough... and this prophecy is borne out in how we turn to the State, not God, to solve our perceived woes.
Christians have never “had it so good” is the inane conception of “GDP NUMBER GO UP…ALL IS GOOD!” Leaving the economics of the present aside, which have been in STEEP decline, young Christians in this country have never been more isolated, depressed, unhealthy, born into broken and spiritually impoverished homes (the legacy of the Boomers) as they are now. The social fabric is ripped to shreds and there’s not enough elder millennials or boomers helping to put the pieces back together, which starts with securing a stable family and home life for our kids.
Americans don't learn unless we wreck everything first. Our boomer president will put the coup de grace on our floundering economy in his attempt to secure us; then the kids can pick up the pieces. Maybe they'll repent, maybe they won't. But boomers didn't put guns to the heads of the gen xers. et. al. to force them to abandon their wives and kids like they did. They made those choices on their own. The sons will be punished for their own sins, not the sins of their fathers. Ezekiel 18:20
Great post, informative and insightful. Thanks!
Just because every ism fails?
It is not just that post-liberalism has failed, Western culture altogether has failed.
Sinners who are by self-definition entirely God-less inevitably create hell on earth especially as there are now 8 billion of us and we have the powerful technology so to do.
Put in another was the wages and business of sinners is death.
Western man (in particular) has always been deeply psychotic. In his book Columbus & Others Cannibals Jack Forbes called this syndrome the Wetiko dis-ease or psychosis.
This reference describes the nature of the Wetiko psychosis.
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/undreaming-wetiko-introduction
It could be argued that the Orange Oaf (aka Trumpzilla) is the leading edge vector of this collective psychosis. He is a religiously and culturally illiterate nihilistic barbarian, a pathological liar and a life-time professional grifter.
It is said that a fish rots from the head down. Using that as a metaphor a similar process occurs in all corporations of whatever size - political, business and sporting clubs - the rottenness percolates all the way down to the shop floor.
What therefore happens, and is indeed happening, when the head (Trump) of the collective US body-corporate is rotten to the core.
Post-liberalism is dead because Dreher's critics consider him authoritarian? Pretty confusing logic to follow.
"... he notes that true complimentary [sic; read: complementary] truths about liberalism ...."
Sharp piece, thank you. I appreciate the spotlight given to O’Donovan in particular.