Why Postliberalism Failed

Postliberalism “is the name for an authoritarian ideology dedicated to using state power to impose a reactionary Catholic vision of the Church, family, and labor.”¹ Why Postliberalism Failed is a searing indictment by authors James M. Patterson and Thomas D. Howes of the philosophy and recent political movement. This criticism does not come from secular, dissident, or leftist sources: the free-market conservative authors are longtime practitioners and scholars of Catholicism, not tourists of the faith.

Postliberalism fashions itself as a successor ideology to liberalism which is not so much about localism or communitarianism “as it is about a powerful, centralized government imposing from the top down a theologically informed vision of the public good on all national subjects regardless of their faith.”² The authors contend that postliberalism is not only doomed to be a philosophical and political failure, but its effort to impose a reactionary order “would violate Catholic social teaching and undermine the very ends postliberals believe they are serving,” common goods such as respect for persons and shared abundance.³

So, why should we be concerned about a seemingly fringe movement with manifestly bad ideas? Because its adherents have captured respected institutions of civil society, such as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, some of its key scholars are at elite schools like Harvard Law (Adrian Vermeule) and Notre Dame (Patrick Deneen), and one of its more vocal proponents is Vice President JD Vance. What once was a minute Internet subculture with weird ideas has become, in just ten years, a still small but strategic and well-funded cadre with widespread publicity and a proponent one step removed from the most powerful job in the world.

Postliberalism repudiates emphases on negative liberty, economic dynamism, and democratic self-government. Its defenders “see individual liberty as the seed of disorder, as individuals require superior authorities to curtail the misuse of liberty.” Economic dynamism, for postliberals, is another source of potential disorder in need of hierarchical control; “hence, the economy is taken out of the hands of individuals and placed in the state, which then organizes the economy in collaboration with state-approved guilds or cartels.” Finally, democratic self-government places too much control in the hands of individuals without proper expertise or moral foundation; “hence, state power should rest in the hands of an executive-led bureaucracy that provides for the general welfare rooted in the spiritual direction of the Church.”⁴

Postliberals wish to supplant the Left as the party that represents members of the state bureaucracy and “to put that bureaucracy to work providing a kind of right-wing welfare state, wherein beneficiaries are not individuals, as liberals would have it, but intact families producing children above the replacement rate.”⁵ Without a free and dynamic market, where all the money will come from to fund such extravagance is left unaddressed.

The Historical Context

Some postliberals, such as Rod Dreher and Patrick Deneen, initially advocated for the devout remnant to remove themselves from corrupted liberal society and preserve their traditions in local communities (the “Benedict Option”). Then right-wing populist Donald Trump won the presidency unexpectedly, which spelled a new opportunity for reactionaries not merely to survive liberalism but to supplant it. Postliberals often portray liberalism broadly construed, which includes the relatively free-market conservatism of Reagan and Bush, as not only wrongheaded but insidious. They focus on liberalism as an abstraction rather than an empirically grounded family of beliefs. They aim to capture the elite institutions allegedly failing under liberal control and usher in an improved dictatorial rule necessary for the preservation of their vision of social order.

Postliberals find their philosophical inspiration in the writings of several nineteenth- and twentieth-century Continental authors. Perhaps their largest influence is Joseph de Maistre, reactionary defender of absolute monarchy, whose observations of the French Revolution’s terrors led him to contend that the people are incompetent and immoral, subject to passions that made self-governance an impossibility. “They naturally tended toward anarchy without a strong leader directing their efforts and constraining their worst instincts.”⁶ This theme of individuals lacking meaningful agency is crucial for the postliberal narrative, as we will see.

While individuals lack agency, groups and historical forces are powerful on this metaphysical outlook. Many nineteenth-century postliberals maintained that rule by the throne and altar didn’t fail of its own accord. Rather, Judeo-Masonic conspiracies imposed liberalism on the unwitting masses “by convincing the people of Catholic monarchies that freedom from hierarchical constraint would be a blessing.”⁷ Louis de Bonald blamed the French Revolution on the lowering of moral standards that came from “embracing the modern economic vision of Adam Smith over the older feudal Catholic hierarchy that he believed provided a surer and happier foundation for French political life.” Like nearly all reactionaries, Bonald reimagined the pre-revolutionary French past “as a peaceful pastoral world with generous courageous kings, pious bishops, and humble peasants working together in harmony” until liberal Freemasons and Jews ruined everything.⁸ Romanticizing a mythological past is a common theme, and Bonald wasn’t alone in hoping to make France “great” again.

Unlike American conservative defenses of preserving economic and political freedom, what European figures like Bonald wanted to conserve was not ordered liberty protected by a constitution “but the feudal order and the rights and privileges that belonged to people like Bonald and few others.”⁹ Reactionaries after Bonald would remain deeply suspicious of economic freedom “because of how it unleashed forces that could undermine the state and which the Church could not control.”¹⁰ Never mind the enormous benefits of such freedom—nor was much thought given to the moral norms and innovation requisite for these forces driving economic growth. Apparently, the hoi polloi could be left to do the lowly work of material entrepreneurship while barely exhibiting any independence of mind with regard to ethical and prudential values, whereas contemplative postliberals took themselves to have a monopoly on loftier truths.

The reactionary nineteenth-century journalist Louis Veuillot was a principal publisher of the “blood libel” that accused Jews of murdering Christian babies for secret rituals. Veuillot “used the Talmud as the basis for his invectives against Jews, but he could not and did not read a word of it, instead relying on secondary sources with their own agendas.”¹¹ Patterson and Howes include several lengthy quotations from various authors to give the reader a sense of how demented these ideas were and, hence, why postliberals should want nothing to do with them. Instead, however, current postliberals selectively embrace these writings in public, “leading an informed person to wonder what other ideas, if any, they embrace in private.”¹² Seemingly endless passages alleging a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy serve “as a substitute for serious consideration of political and social questions facing Catholic Europe and Latin America.” Rather than looking inward at the problems of absolute monarchy and authoritarian theocracy, it’s easier to blame a liberal conspiracy against helpless subjects as the source of disorder and discontent.¹³

Carl Schmitt was another intellectual forebear of modern postliberalism. Schmitt found liberal proceduralism incapable of “reckoning with the true nature of the political, which he defined as the power to declare the ‘state of exception,’ or emergency powers during a period of crisis, and the subsequent emergence of the ‘friend-enemy distinction.’”¹⁴ Spanish statesman Juan Donoso Cortés, who significantly influenced Schmitt’s thought, preached a false dichotomy by insisting that nations had a choice between two dictatorships, “the revolutionary with all its attending vices or the monarchy with its tough but necessary discipline.”¹⁵

The pope served, for Schmitt, “as the dictator over his spiritual empire, issuing final statements on matters rather than letting them endlessly fester in debates like he supposed liberals would argue.”¹⁶ Schmitt wanted the Church “to embrace the kind of politics he attributed to the Freemasons, namely that of secret conspiracies” but this time against liberal regimes.¹⁷ The idea of a Catholic counter-conspiracy “is foundational to Adrian Vermeule’s arguments, and Schmitt is a thinker on whom he relies. It is no surprise that we find in Schmitt’s work on the Catholic Church the foundation for Vermeule’s advocacy for ‘integration from within’ elite liberal institutions.”¹⁸

Reactionary political thought had a robust connection with nineteenth century papacies. Pius IX favored the work of Veuillot and encouraged Catholic priests “to spread the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy as part of a political strategy to counter political liberalism” and establish absolutist rule.¹⁹ That the outcome of a powerful absolute state under a single ruler “had been the subjugation of the Church to the state appeared to bother no one.”²⁰ Things would be different with the “right” people in charge.

Ironically, liberal institutions were not prevalent traditions in the nations where postliberal governments arose partly in resistance to unjust political behavior. Many newly parliamentary governments operated in states “with little experience in self-government and extensive histories of absolute monarchy.” Even the so-called “liberals” of these states “understood parliamentary government in absolutist terms—wherein liberal majorities could do as they pleased for as long as necessary to ensure permanent victory.”²¹ Thus, anti-clerical republicans often restricted religious liberties, leading to a reaction of right-wing authoritarians seeking “a dictator who could cut through parliamentary logjams and annihilate the enemies of the Church without concern for their so-called ‘rights.’”²²

Catholic reactionaries found a secular fascist bedfellow in Benito Mussolini during the interwar years. Mussolini called for the death of liberalism everywhere, “which made him at least an ally in his desired ends if not his reasons for them.” Despite Mussolini’s notorious impiety, his moral and financial support “consolidated Catholic support for him and inspired Catholic reactionaries across Europe and Latin America . . . They might want a devout Catholic dictator, but they could also settle for an impious friend in power if that was their only good option.”²³

Fascists and reactionary Catholics “saw their ideologies as the successor ideologies after years of disorder within liberal parliamentary regimes.” However, one could not simply blame liberal incompetence for this: “one of the chief causes of disorder was their own parties, and that was no accident.” Provoking a crisis in parliamentary politics “created the conditions for a dictatorship, and the dictator would ascend with the promise of restoring order and national prestige.”²⁴

Patterson and Howes devote several richly detailed, albeit depressing, chapters to outlining the damage wrought by nineteenth- and twentieth-century postliberal regimes and why they were bound to fail in maintaining power either politically or ideologically. In some “collusive” cases (Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, and Belgium), integralist parties failed because they needed fascist dictators far more than the dictators needed them. Once convinced of the army’s loyalty, autocrats always cut the integralists loose.²⁵ “Syncretic” cases (Vichy France, Spain, Austria, Slovakia, and Croatia) saw a modest degree of temporary postliberal “success” because the dictator would adopt a Catholic persona and rest his legitimacy on supposed service to the Church. However, these regimes left in their wake autarkic economic stagnation, poverty, starvation, state-sanctioned kidnapping of dissidents’ children, genocide of Jews and dissidents, and other massive crackdowns on civil and political freedoms. Successors to these dictatorships often ushered in some degree of liberal democracy and market liberalization to help their countries recover.

Even a brief summary of that history is beyond the scope of this article, though it is worth noting that current postliberals often praise these failed regimes—many of which murdered their own people and collaborated with totalitarians, like the Nazis—as heroic efforts suggestive of the kinds of polity they hope to revive. Nobody can accuse postliberals of hiding their idols.

The Present Context

Today’s postliberals combine papalist and the later ultramontanist traditions with the European reactionary tradition: “The result is not merely speculative political thought but an ideological plan of action.”²⁶ Catholic reactionaries could no longer regard their approach to politics as a restoration because “a new Christendom required a revolution, and a revolution requires the creation of a revolutionary ideology and politics.”²⁷

Kevin Vallier identifies the integralist dilemma: “On the one hand, the integralist wants to impose a modern version of Catholic Christendom as she believes the Church requires. On the other hand, the imposition of such a regime would inevitably require all kinds of violations of Catholic social teaching,” which the history of postliberal regimes reveals in the most gruesome ways.²⁸ When people will not voluntarily adopt Catholicism as a free act of conscience, they will be forced to adhere. If they still resist, they may face imprisonment or death. This hardly seems consistent with Catholic teaching elsewhere.

Current-day Catholic integralists, such as Edmund Waldstein, advocate for the subjugation of all Christian states to the pope’s indirect temporal authority. These invocations “serve to undermine Catholic support for modern pluralist societies and their republican governments,” leaving the pope as “a kind of spiritual dictator who delegates temporal dictatorship to his loyal subjects.” This view of politics “bears no resemblance to magisterial Catholic social teaching” according to the authors.²⁹ Since the Second Vatican Council in 1965, the Church has sacralized freedom of conscience and religious liberty as outlined in Dignitatis Humanae, and so the legitimacy of governments depends on the consent of the people, not papal authority. While postliberal views may fall short of heresy, these views are at best in deep tension with current mainline Catholic thought. Not only are their views unsupported on independent grounds, but they are also unsupported by most Catholics. Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that postliberal regimes failed even in majority Catholic nations, which America decidedly is not.

Vermeule, Deneen, and other postliberals speak highly of earlier postliberals, often papering over their anti-Semitic and conspiratorial accounts of liberalism. In their view, liberalism opposes the natural preliberal order of institutions, like the family, the local community, and the Church—and people need emancipation from these alleged oppressors. But “without natural institutions in place to foster civic life, liberalism succumbs to its inherent vices of violence, disorder, and loneliness.”³⁰ Retreat to localism and escape from liberal modernity are not options because liberal elites trick the masses into believing that the false gods of emancipation and consumerism are the only options worth seeking. In fact, Deneen defines liberalism (oddly) “as the effort to liberate the individual from all constraints—economic, religious, political, and even biological.”³¹ But it is doubtful that any serious liberal’s commitments to individual freedom and moral equality would be aptly described in such a crude and simplistic manner.

Patterson and Howes observe in a passing remark that “an interesting feature of so many reactionaries is the desire for a dictator to govern them because they cannot govern themselves.”³² One wishes the authors had made this observation a more explicit throughline of the text. Defenses of authoritarianism would be non-starters if their proponents, as do defenders of liberalism, acknowledged that individuals have sufficient agency to govern themselves. But since both postliberals and leftist authoritarians deny this agency—ascribing an undignified and servile victimhood status to all but a unique few—one wonders on what grounds other than assertion they are entitled to ascribe agency even to these few.

To wit, Deneen treats liberalism as a historical and structural force over which no one has control. Vermeule claims, both laughably and chillingly, that the only way to free liberals from their captivity “requires the entry of a postliberal order that, upon its introduction, will be welcomed by all but the most die-hard liberals who must be dealt with by force.”³³ Like many nineteenth century German philosophers, today’s postliberals view history as teleological or goal-directed, and thus as the primary mover of human affairs. Sounding like off-brand Marxists, they argue that the internal contradictions of liberalism will lead ordinary people to seize elite political institutions after they gain a postliberal consciousness and recognize their alienation from preliberal institutions, thus restoring these institutions in an[JF9] even better form than before.³⁴ That the predicted Marxist dialectic never transpired in a proletarian revolution doesn’t seem to dampen postliberal confidence in their own predictions.

Postliberals want to develop their own elite to rival the decadent liberal elite and thereby usher in the postliberal order. Vermeule is confident that most Americans do not really know what they want, simply taking what elites give them. Once postliberals take over elite institutions, most Americans will accept postliberalism.³⁵ This optimism makes sense given that postliberals view all but a few as sheep. Reliance on people’s alleged passivity also suggests, lip service aside, that one isn’t much concerned with the truth of one’s ideology.

Postliberals strawman liberal freedom as involving mere consumption and vice. No credit is given to positive uses of such freedom. The individual is seen, at most, as Homo economicus but often not even that: just a mouth to feed and an inert soul to purify. Is this how God regards His creation? What about individuals as creative beings? As producers? As loving parents and friends? As charitable? As entrepreneurs? As artists, scientists, and inventors? As beings capable of thinking for themselves? Deneen’s “aristo-populism” seeks “Aristotelian ends by Machiavellian means.” How most of us populate the unwashed masses, while these strongmen have perfect wisdom and moral self-governance, is never explained. The authors suggest that Deneen and Vermeule fancy themselves as such leaders. Perhaps this goes too far, but even if key postliberals are more modest about their own abilities, the mystery remains as to how they would identify the führers who should rule us.

Conclusion

Catherine Pakaluk observes in a foreword to the book how postliberals reject “the most fundamental tenet of classical political philosophy: that the family and civil society are prior to the political order.” Coercion and central planning, not voluntary action and decentralized learning, are the default conditions of the postliberal political economy. They invert subsidiarity: “that what can be accomplished by smaller and lower communities should not be absorbed by larger and higher ones.”³⁶ Nor do they much care about economic objections to their manifestos. As Pakaluk laments, a movement that dismisses empirical inquiry about human behavior “cannot build a politics adequate to human beings. It can only build a politics adequate to its theory—and when the theory fails, as it always does, it will blame the people for not living up to the model.”³⁷

Comparing the best version of your ideology with the worst version of the ideology you critique does not make for good scholarship. Anyone can do that. In outlining just how unconvincing and authoritarian this movement is, Patterson and Howes have done a tremendous service in authoring Why Postliberalism Failed. As it failed with many authoritarian regimes, may it continue to fail—but just as importantly, may freedom ring louder.