Every one of Deneen’s tired, weak ideas was identified and dispatched by Stephen Holmes in the brilliant _Anatomy of Antiliberalism,_ years before Deneen even imagined he had an idea. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674031852
Certainly one fatal flaw I see in modern (neo-)liberalism is that it does not and can not create the kind of people and therefore culture on which itself rests upon. I see the (neo-)liberal elite of our western civilization to be totally blindsided by the irrationality of the public lending power to their own orange-colored demise as well as incredulous and impotent against the destruction of the formal and informal institutions that make a liberal-democratic system work. Liberalisms corrosive power to dissolve traditions, values and virtues has made itself extremely vulnerable to attacks by the nihilistic and chaotic forces of the dark passions in the age of social media.
Liberalisms process of "liberating" people from oppressive institutions has produced a kind of people that will either allow Liberalism to devour itself or be destroyed by the undead ghouls necromanced by the foolish offspring of liberalism (looking at you Objectivism and Libertarianism). What started out as political and economic liberation spread into all areas of human life and psyche. It recently reached an extreme point where now liberation from biological determinants like sex is considered a worthwile goal and a moral imperative. However the true end will be the liberation from human being itself, which Bond villains like Thiel already openly fantasize about. The snake eating it's own tail.
Just ask yourself what kind of a society and people do you get when a culture posits greed, pursuit of self-interest and self-actualisation, pleasure-seeking and maximising one's own benefit as the highest moral imperatives? Does anybody really believe you will get rational and virtuous people that behave civilized and tolerant? People that care for the maintenance and continuance of culture and society? Also what kind of politicians and political operatives do you get, when the political system rewards theatrics, dishonesty, manipulation, lies and deception? Is it any wonder people become disillusioned, cynical and in the end nihilistic enough to agree to the euthanisation of this system?
Liberalism will have to contend with this again and listen carefully to its critics or it will triumph itself to death. However this critical process needs to be postponed for now. Right now it is imperative that a broad public coalition is built, led by an elite to fight united against the authoritarian revolution by the post-truth nihilists and power-mad megalomaniacs.
You can not do this, when you believe this to be true:
"In fact, liberalism exists to peacefully manage conflict between many competing political plans. It allows people under it to hold whatever views they want—Marxism, libertarianism, evangelicalism, atheism—so long as they observe the rule of law and refrain from forcing their views on others."
Liberalism can not be both, a neutral mediator between world views and itself the dominating worldview.
The US constitution and any other constitution for that matter, as well as any other contrived social system is always contingent on unwritten institutions (norms, rules, customs, values, virtues etc. manifested by a people) it can not itself create. Prerequisites are always baked in the cake. No human is a blank slate, as is no elite, as is no society. Communism sounds great on paper too until you try to implement it.
If liberal institutions were really based in the reality of human nature, they would not fail against literal insane hogwash. However watch how all these institutions are crumbling right now by the onslaught of literal madhouse inmates and their profiteering billionaire handlers.
By the way, if I sound like I defend Deneen, who I haven't read, or "post-liberalism", I do not. The same critique applies to what is described as "post-liberalisms" goal of building a pre-liberal world. I agree with the closing paragraphs.
Path-dependencies are real. Ignore them and you/a society will fall off that mountain.
Liberalism has to adapt to effectively counter the anti-civilizational forces that threaten us. The liberal elite has to leave the position as manager and ascend to the position of leader and champion again. For that it has to find a new, appealing political formula, a narrative that inspires and immunises against the allures of the dark side. "Everyone will be rich!" or "Everyone can be whatever they want to be" doesn't cut it anymore.
It can't replace liberalism because it's not "post-liberalism", it's PRE-liberalism. It does not reject the 'liberalism' (i.e. social democracy) of FDR and LBJ, it rejects the liberalism of Locke, Jefferson and Franklin. The central thesis is that liberalism is tired and unsuited to the modern world, and the solution is to replace it with monarchical systems which liberalism replaced because they were tired and unsuited to the contemporary world.
I suspect that many post-liberals are mostly aggrieved that so many Americans do not share their religious beliefs, and they try to argue that it's really other things they're concerned about, and those things would all be better if we had a society organized around "tradition" that should not be challenged, and "community" where everyone professes the same beliefs.
I saw a reactionary who's less intelligent than Deneen try to make all of history (or the little he knows of it) conform to the thesis that the most vital societies are characterized by "religious solidarity," a euphemism for creedal conformity (backed up by the power of the state). It was easy to poke holes in every example provided.
I completely agree with this critique of post-liberalism. This line in particular is worth emphasising: 'The effort to force 340 million diverse Americans to accept a narrow, postliberal-approved definition of the “common good” would be terrifyingly oppressive if it wasn’t fundamentally unworkable.' It is a reminder of why the pluralism and tolerance of liberalism are so crucial - they are an antidote to stifling conformity and authoritarianism. Yet there is, unfortunately, a glimmer of truth in Deneen's writing. Deneen attacks liberalism for promoting a hyper-individualism which is spiritually bankrupt. In 'Why Liberalism Failed', he writes that liberalism leads to 'increasingly separate, autonomous, nonrelational selves replete with rights and defined by our liberty, but insecure, powerless, afraid, and alone.' I do think that humans yearn for a collective identity or community membership, some higher guiding purpose in life that goes beyond self-actualisation or success. Ultimately, liberalism's pluralism is both its greatest strength and a gnawing weakness.
Deneen confuses "a world in which stuff I don't like won't exist" with a theocratic dictatorship. This might not be brutal. It will more likely be mediocre and dull as fuck. All these integralists think it's gonna be all Palestrina and Chartres and Aquinas and chivalry and defeating Sauron. More likely it will be Ireland in the '50s, a place in which people were desperate to get out of they weren't too depressed. Who in Ireland now pines for a time when politicians had to suck up to the clergy (which was not dominated by the best: the best got the hell out)?
Left to its own devices capitalism commodifies everything as inputs to its goal of profit, public land gets enclosed so that forests can be reduced to timber farms, prairies to fields of inedible corn, citizens to consumers, all to ensure the wealthiest get wealthier while externalizing the costs to governments, societies, and the earth.
Capitalism deconstructs all it touches for profit, and liberalism tends to moderate those effects while modern conservatism seeks to unleash them...and *that's* the real reason Deneen's project takes the form it does.
Thanks for this article and for calling out "post-liberalism" which is somehow becoming a philosophy, not just a catchy phrase, among many conservative essayists. As I understand it - and it's a fairly incoherent philosophy, so good luck reaching a clear understanding... - it boils down to ending minority/individual freedoms in order to propagate some sort of greater "truth." So go ahead and ban speech that says the "wrong" things; limit religious practices that aren't what I am certain is God's will; maybe even end elections once the "right" people are voted in... Obviously, that's a dangerous kind of politics, and its exponents often root it in an overconfident, know-it-all worldview and grossly distorted views of religion and early American history. And it isn't novel - our Founders recognized illiberalism (which is really all that "post-liberalism" is) as opening the door to persecution. But post-liberalism is undeniably becoming trendy, so the rest of us need to be familiar with it so that we can recognize those who espouse it and stop them from attaining power.
Curious how his work compares to Aleksandr Dugin's "The Fourth Political Theory", which was trying to be a critique of Communism, Fascism, and Democracy while only hand-waving a replacement. It was more grievance than substance.
Every one of Deneen’s tired, weak ideas was identified and dispatched by Stephen Holmes in the brilliant _Anatomy of Antiliberalism,_ years before Deneen even imagined he had an idea. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674031852
Liberalism has failed because it adopted the universalist assumptions of the 1648 Westphalian state. There is an alternative: https://store.mises.org/Constitution-of-Non-state-Government-Field-Guide-to-Texas-Secession-P11264.aspx#reviewsPane
Certainly one fatal flaw I see in modern (neo-)liberalism is that it does not and can not create the kind of people and therefore culture on which itself rests upon. I see the (neo-)liberal elite of our western civilization to be totally blindsided by the irrationality of the public lending power to their own orange-colored demise as well as incredulous and impotent against the destruction of the formal and informal institutions that make a liberal-democratic system work. Liberalisms corrosive power to dissolve traditions, values and virtues has made itself extremely vulnerable to attacks by the nihilistic and chaotic forces of the dark passions in the age of social media.
Liberalisms process of "liberating" people from oppressive institutions has produced a kind of people that will either allow Liberalism to devour itself or be destroyed by the undead ghouls necromanced by the foolish offspring of liberalism (looking at you Objectivism and Libertarianism). What started out as political and economic liberation spread into all areas of human life and psyche. It recently reached an extreme point where now liberation from biological determinants like sex is considered a worthwile goal and a moral imperative. However the true end will be the liberation from human being itself, which Bond villains like Thiel already openly fantasize about. The snake eating it's own tail.
Just ask yourself what kind of a society and people do you get when a culture posits greed, pursuit of self-interest and self-actualisation, pleasure-seeking and maximising one's own benefit as the highest moral imperatives? Does anybody really believe you will get rational and virtuous people that behave civilized and tolerant? People that care for the maintenance and continuance of culture and society? Also what kind of politicians and political operatives do you get, when the political system rewards theatrics, dishonesty, manipulation, lies and deception? Is it any wonder people become disillusioned, cynical and in the end nihilistic enough to agree to the euthanisation of this system?
Liberalism will have to contend with this again and listen carefully to its critics or it will triumph itself to death. However this critical process needs to be postponed for now. Right now it is imperative that a broad public coalition is built, led by an elite to fight united against the authoritarian revolution by the post-truth nihilists and power-mad megalomaniacs.
You can not do this, when you believe this to be true:
"In fact, liberalism exists to peacefully manage conflict between many competing political plans. It allows people under it to hold whatever views they want—Marxism, libertarianism, evangelicalism, atheism—so long as they observe the rule of law and refrain from forcing their views on others."
Liberalism can not be both, a neutral mediator between world views and itself the dominating worldview.
The US constitution and any other constitution for that matter, as well as any other contrived social system is always contingent on unwritten institutions (norms, rules, customs, values, virtues etc. manifested by a people) it can not itself create. Prerequisites are always baked in the cake. No human is a blank slate, as is no elite, as is no society. Communism sounds great on paper too until you try to implement it.
If liberal institutions were really based in the reality of human nature, they would not fail against literal insane hogwash. However watch how all these institutions are crumbling right now by the onslaught of literal madhouse inmates and their profiteering billionaire handlers.
By the way, if I sound like I defend Deneen, who I haven't read, or "post-liberalism", I do not. The same critique applies to what is described as "post-liberalisms" goal of building a pre-liberal world. I agree with the closing paragraphs.
Path-dependencies are real. Ignore them and you/a society will fall off that mountain.
Liberalism has to adapt to effectively counter the anti-civilizational forces that threaten us. The liberal elite has to leave the position as manager and ascend to the position of leader and champion again. For that it has to find a new, appealing political formula, a narrative that inspires and immunises against the allures of the dark side. "Everyone will be rich!" or "Everyone can be whatever they want to be" doesn't cut it anymore.
It can't replace liberalism because it's not "post-liberalism", it's PRE-liberalism. It does not reject the 'liberalism' (i.e. social democracy) of FDR and LBJ, it rejects the liberalism of Locke, Jefferson and Franklin. The central thesis is that liberalism is tired and unsuited to the modern world, and the solution is to replace it with monarchical systems which liberalism replaced because they were tired and unsuited to the contemporary world.
I suspect that many post-liberals are mostly aggrieved that so many Americans do not share their religious beliefs, and they try to argue that it's really other things they're concerned about, and those things would all be better if we had a society organized around "tradition" that should not be challenged, and "community" where everyone professes the same beliefs.
I saw a reactionary who's less intelligent than Deneen try to make all of history (or the little he knows of it) conform to the thesis that the most vital societies are characterized by "religious solidarity," a euphemism for creedal conformity (backed up by the power of the state). It was easy to poke holes in every example provided.
Good stuff. Deneen is another genius who wants to explain to us what is so obvious to him, who knows better than the founding fathers did.
I completely agree with this critique of post-liberalism. This line in particular is worth emphasising: 'The effort to force 340 million diverse Americans to accept a narrow, postliberal-approved definition of the “common good” would be terrifyingly oppressive if it wasn’t fundamentally unworkable.' It is a reminder of why the pluralism and tolerance of liberalism are so crucial - they are an antidote to stifling conformity and authoritarianism. Yet there is, unfortunately, a glimmer of truth in Deneen's writing. Deneen attacks liberalism for promoting a hyper-individualism which is spiritually bankrupt. In 'Why Liberalism Failed', he writes that liberalism leads to 'increasingly separate, autonomous, nonrelational selves replete with rights and defined by our liberty, but insecure, powerless, afraid, and alone.' I do think that humans yearn for a collective identity or community membership, some higher guiding purpose in life that goes beyond self-actualisation or success. Ultimately, liberalism's pluralism is both its greatest strength and a gnawing weakness.
I see Amy Coney Barrett setting at his knee whilst at Notre Dame
Deneen confuses "a world in which stuff I don't like won't exist" with a theocratic dictatorship. This might not be brutal. It will more likely be mediocre and dull as fuck. All these integralists think it's gonna be all Palestrina and Chartres and Aquinas and chivalry and defeating Sauron. More likely it will be Ireland in the '50s, a place in which people were desperate to get out of they weren't too depressed. Who in Ireland now pines for a time when politicians had to suck up to the clergy (which was not dominated by the best: the best got the hell out)?
Deneen confuses "liberalism" with "capitalism."
Left to its own devices capitalism commodifies everything as inputs to its goal of profit, public land gets enclosed so that forests can be reduced to timber farms, prairies to fields of inedible corn, citizens to consumers, all to ensure the wealthiest get wealthier while externalizing the costs to governments, societies, and the earth.
Capitalism deconstructs all it touches for profit, and liberalism tends to moderate those effects while modern conservatism seeks to unleash them...and *that's* the real reason Deneen's project takes the form it does.
Thanks for this article and for calling out "post-liberalism" which is somehow becoming a philosophy, not just a catchy phrase, among many conservative essayists. As I understand it - and it's a fairly incoherent philosophy, so good luck reaching a clear understanding... - it boils down to ending minority/individual freedoms in order to propagate some sort of greater "truth." So go ahead and ban speech that says the "wrong" things; limit religious practices that aren't what I am certain is God's will; maybe even end elections once the "right" people are voted in... Obviously, that's a dangerous kind of politics, and its exponents often root it in an overconfident, know-it-all worldview and grossly distorted views of religion and early American history. And it isn't novel - our Founders recognized illiberalism (which is really all that "post-liberalism" is) as opening the door to persecution. But post-liberalism is undeniably becoming trendy, so the rest of us need to be familiar with it so that we can recognize those who espouse it and stop them from attaining power.
I reviewed Deneen’s book, Regime Change, for Arc when it came out, and came to similar conclusions:
https://www.arcdigital.media/p/this-is-what-happens-when-you-find
Curious how his work compares to Aleksandr Dugin's "The Fourth Political Theory", which was trying to be a critique of Communism, Fascism, and Democracy while only hand-waving a replacement. It was more grievance than substance.