In the United States, a current of thought is forming whose main ideologues have dubbed “post-liberalism”. These conservative intellectuals advocate the use of political power for what they consider the common good. His ideas help to understand the profound change that is taking place in the rights of other countries. This is the first article in a series on the conservatives’ new relationship to the state.
The post-liberal right has one major complaint: in its view, conservatives are losing the battle of ideas against cultural progressivism – the moral view of the left – because of liberalism. The result is a social and political order where it is increasingly difficult to prosper economically and pursue a good life.
Why do they say that liberalism is to blame? For three reasons:
First, because the allergy of economic liberalism to state interventionism deprived conservatives of a very valuable resource in this battle: political power.
Second, because the anthropological postulates defended by theorists of classical liberalism undermined conservative causes from within.
And third, because contemporary political liberalism established rules of the game – the neutrality of the State – which, in the opinion of the post -liberals, the left does not comply.
Post-liberalism is a doctrine under construction. Contributing to her US profile are four thinkers who began publishing The Postliberal Order newsletter last November: Patrick J. Deneen, Gladden Pappin, Adrian Vermeule and Chad Pecknold. Outside this group, other prominent names are: Sohrab Ahmari, Yoram Hazony and Rod Dreher, although they maintain differences between them. In the United Kingdom, the post-liberalism of Adrian Pabst, supporter of a left favorable to family and religious values, is giving rise to talk.
A dead consensus
The first reason to criticize liberalism is best understood in light of the American context. During the Cold War, the right organized itself into an anti-communist coalition that merged three distinct traditions: conservatives, economic liberals, and foreign policy interventionists (neocons). From there emerged a package of positions that can be more or less summarized as follows: family values, laissez faire in the economy and pro-democracy crusades abroad.
Post-liberals believe that, with this alliance, conservatism lost out. The essayist Tanner Green explains it very well: if the neoconservatives have overloaded the credibility of the conservatives with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the neoliberals have denied them the possibility of using public power to promote their moral vision. “This is the real cause of the New Right’s dismay: the Conservatives lost the culture war, and this defeat – they maintain – was their own side’s fault. The left is never deprived of using the state to make a world more woke, but we have never been allowed to respond in the same way.
Frustration post-liberal with anti-statism is evident in the statement “Against the Dead Consensus”, published in 2019. Ahmari, Dreher, Deneen and the rest of the signatories – there is only one woman on a list of , columnist Julia Yost – disapproves the old republican entente that limited itself to defending “traditional values from the outside”, while conservatism was distorted by supporting causes that are foreign to it.
To rebalance things, post-liberals they refuse to continue proclaiming as conservative “dogmas” certain liberal principles, such as the minimal state, free trade or the free movement of people. And they demand that the Republican Party seize the space opened up by Donald Trump and get more involved in the cultural battle (see: Debate on Post-Trump Conservatism).
New Allies
In an article entitled “From Conservatism to Post-Liberalism: The Right After 2020”, Gladden Pappin, editor-in-chief of American Affairs and associate professor of political science at the University of Dallas, expands the argument. In his opinion, “the liberal view of the state as the guarantor of peace and individual liberties” is not enough to improve the material living conditions of the Americans who are being left behind or to reverse the crisis of values.
For Pappin, Trump’s victory in 2016 suggests that there is an important voter base “in favor of greater state intervention”, whether to guide economic production in accordance with the national interest, or to curb the disintegrating effects of cultural progressivism on families. Now the right must decide whether to follow the path started by that heterodox republican or return to the orthodoxy of laissez faire.
In practice, opt for the The first would mean forging a new consensus on the right. As Patrick J. Deneen, professor of political philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, explains in a recent article, the alliance would be open to all voters who wanted “a political and social order inspired by the old economic themes of the working class that the left once proposed, and that wants to prioritize the use of public power to strengthen civic and family institutions guarded by the right.”
We are not autonomous individuals
) The second reason for conservative distrust of liberalism is more philosophical. The signatories of the declaration “Against the Dead Consensus” do not oppose the old republican consensus solely out of strategy or political calculation. There is a deeper reason: the rejection of the anthropological assumptions that underlie liberal philosophy and, above all, in relation to what they consider the most harmful trait of liberalism: the “fetishization of autonomy”; the cult of extreme individualism, with no other limit than the prohibition of not harming others.
Certainly, the post-liberal thinker who best addressed this issue is Deneen. In his opinion, it is not worth saying that contemporary liberalism has distorted the classical liberal tradition. Rather, the problem – as he explained in his book Why Has Liberalism Failed? (2009) – is that this doctrine performed too well the vision of man on which it is based.
Liberalism, says Deneen, is presented as a doctrine that leaves individuals alone, because it limits itself to allowing each pursue his own idea of what a good life would be. But the truth is that this doctrine also aspired from its origins to transform people and society, guiding them towards unlimited autonomy. In tune with communitarianism, he criticizes the fact that freedom has become synonymous with emancipation from any kind of bond, custom or tradition. The paradox is that this autonomous (and isolated) individual increasingly needs the state to fulfill his desires for liberation.
Journalist Sohrab Ahmari, former New York Post opinion chief and protagonist of an important debate in the Christian conservative sphere, suggests another paradox: the libertarian project of emancipation does not go well with liberal tolerance, because the logic of absolute autonomy leads to seeking the consent of those who have an obscure view of moral permissiveness. As he says in his now famous article “Against David French-ism”, advocates of maximum autonomy argue as follows: “To feel fully autonomous, you must approve of our sexual decisions (…); their disapproval makes us feel less than totally free.”
Will post-liberalism save us?
Post-liberal diagnoses they often add fresh perspectives to a topic-saturated public debate and give thought to the weaknesses of liberalism often overlooked for its many accomplishments. But the question remains whether extreme individualism and the other evils they denounce are so closely linked to a specific ideology. Would national-populism, socialism, post-liberalism… make us less individualistic? Should we really continue to wait for an ideology to emerge that saves humanity?
In his essay Why Liberalism Failed?, Deneen emphasized the need to to develop certain habits that renew culture, economy and politics: “Not a better theory, but better practices”. This does not prevent a better philosophy from emerging from these practices over time. Now, however, it appears that Deneen has turned his energies to the political articulation – statism included – of the post-liberal vision. How far has he deviated from his project of promoting ways of life and communities that are “beacons of light and field hospitals” in the midst of the polis?
Nor is it clear that all the evils that occur in liberal democracies are attributable to liberalism. Perhaps the key lies in what each one is capable of building alone and in association with others – and with an enviable freedom, by the way – within this political framework that is the liberal order. Richard J. Neuhaus (1936-2009), intellectual reference of American Catholicism for many years, pointed in this direction: “The Church must propose – incessant, courageous, persuasive, attractive. If we, who are the Church, don’t do that, it’s not liberal democracy’s fault, but ourselves” (see: The difficult practice of liberalism).
False Neutrality
This objection leads us directly to the post-liberals’ third complaint: we are all equally free to think and live as we please, within the limits established by law? Also in public space? Does this include believers?
If we pay attention to philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002), we can expect at least two things from liberal societies: flexibility to accommodate the different worldviews and lifestyles that compete in the public space; and neutrality on the part of the State, which, as an impartial arbiter, is limited to ensuring that everyone can participate in these disputes “as free and equal citizens”.
However, this is exactly what critics of this idyllic version of liberalism question. Neutrality is a myth, because the liberal state takes sides with certain worldviews. For example, when it allows public schools to inculcate a view of family and sexuality contrary to what parents teach their children; or when the authorities force, under penalty of fine, a person or entity to act against their conscience or their ideology; or when the moral convictions of believers aspiring to public office are subjected to special scrutiny, as if non-believers do not have them, etc.
In these cases, the liberal state does not abide by its own rules, and cultural progressivism – increasingly militant – takes advantage of this. Until recently, the conservative response to these double standards was to promote measures that would reinforce the legal protection of the rights and freedoms that liberalism promises to defend: freedom of thought, expression, conscience. In this sense, it is urgent to take seriously the resources available to liberal democracies to accommodate and make room for those with conflicting worldviews.
However, the post-liberal right distrusts the system and does not sees it possible to correct this situation with the rules of liberalism. That’s why he censures mainstream conservatism for its defensiveness: rather than worrying about promoting its moral vision, says Deneen in another article, conservatives insisted on defending “good liberalism”; that is, the one that is truly neutral in the face of different conceptions of the good and that allows us all to live reasonably in peace.
And so they were completely wrong, in Deneen’s opinion, because they changed the noble ideal of order society towards the common good for “liberal indifferentism”. They focused on asserting their right to exist and disagree, while neglecting to promote their conception of the good life. Meanwhile, cultural progressivism – which is neither relativist nor neutral, as it pursues its causes “with a fierce and unshakable determination” – has not hesitated to advance its agenda.
Common good and pluralism
So far we have the essence of Deneen’s diagnosis. The curious thing is that, suddenly, he assumes the role of victim and comments on the criticism leveled at him by the mainstream conservatives, whom he has just criticized: post-liberals must bear, he says, “not only the wrath of progressives, of course, but also that of the ‘classical liberals’, the so-called conservatives who are perhaps even more aggressive in their opposition to a competitor of liberalism”. But what does Deneen expect? Let no one contest his vision of what he calls “common good conservatism”? Will he be able to accept that other conservatives or progressives of any faction do not share his idea of the common good?
Again, reading the latest Deneen, one gets the impression that he walked away from the essay that made him world famous. If he then said things like “it is fair to recognize the achievements of liberalism, and the desire to ‘return’ to a pre-liberal era must be refused”, now he concedes very little. And while the main target of his criticism is relativism (on the right and on the left), the question arises whether he has reservations about pluralism, as when one is surprised that there are conservatives who appeal to “de facto pluralism” in order not to impose something by law. Bear in mind that when post-liberals talk about “using state power in the service of the common good”, they mix several things up. Some measures are very similar – and even shorter – to the European Welfare State. Others look to Viktor Orbán’s policies. And others are of a new kind, with implications in the field of values. We will see in the next article of the series.
*Juan Meseguer is an essayist, poet, doctor in sociology and editor-in-chief of the Spanish website Aceprensa.
©2022 Acpress. Published with permission. Original in
Spanish.