Postliberalism Isn't Enough

and can be misleading...

The leftwing never succeeds in open debate; its driving idea is too shameful to be openly promoted.

Today, a genuine revival of philosophy, adventure, and scientific investigation are threatened by what is called “postliberal” precisely because postliberals and integralists are often #OurGuys who rightly hate the decadent regime under which we suffer.

If postliberal means a right for the learned to rule the simple, for the good to exclude the bad, for the competent to run and to rule—then it stands a fighting chance. Postliberal men who seek to establish the rule of the good and the wise are trying to re-establish genuine political conflict in the West.

However, a rejection of Liberalism, an embrace of “postliberalism,” doesn’t have to be aimed at the re-introduction of politics; it can instead go hand in hand with leftwing fever-dreams. There are people who hate de Maistre, Schmitt, and Nietzsche and at the same time hate Locke and Liberalism.

If “postliberalism” merely means an overcoming of Enlightenment philosophy, a destruction of religious toleration and free speech, a final combination of the public and the private, and a focus on “community,” then postliberalism can be a Big Tent under which we find Marxian communists, race communists, liberation theologians, feminist academics, and transgender shock troopers.

In America, intellectuals like John Dewey and politicians like FDR set themselves against classically liberal ideas and social arrangements. They argued that, for reasons of humanity and rational policy, “the public” should increase its concern and care for the workers and impoverished masses. They overcame classically liberal objections, made on behalf of private property, to welfarism. These men were “partial post-liberals.” America has been pushed by such partial post-liberals from one collapse of liberalism to the next: economic “equality,” gender “equality,” racial “equality,” sex-orientation “equality,” and so on. All of these “advances” represent a postliberal victory.

I fear the rise of a postliberalism that sounds conservative by sounding Christian, but which works alongside leftwing postliberalism to further destroy the concept of citizenship in the West.

Christian postliberalism can take a rightist stance on certain moral issues, while simultaneously denying the right of the learned to rule the simple, of the good to exclude the bad, of the competent to run and to rule, and of a group of men to distinguish and separate themselves from the rest of mankind.

A good indicator (though not perfect) of distinguishing good postliberalism from bad: bad postliberalism attacks decadence as being “individualistic,” “prideful,” and “selfish.” Good postliberalism attacks decadence because it is perverse, demoralizing, weakening, leveling, destructive, irrational, and so on. Decadence—communism, sexual perversity, affirmative action, etc.—is bad, in the individual and society, not because it is “selfish,” or even “evil,” but because it stunts growth and requires hypocrisy. Decadent men, when they rule, must cover themselves with claims to be good. For example: a priest might say he is a sinner, and that because he is such a sinner, and is so well acquainted and honestly open about his weakness, that he should thereby rule. His weakness is his strength. Those who seek to be strong and capable of leading are called weak and sinful because they do not admit to themselves that they are weak and sinful.[1]

Another example, this one not religious, comes from race communism. Racial communism asserts an equality where there is no evident equality; it asserts a would-be equality, i.e., an equality that would be if conditions were identical and if the world had been morally upright. Therefore, the racial communist, in the name of equality, must give precedence to blacks and other victims of history. Maybe this isn’t simple hypocrisy, but it sure is annoying to hear people bleat on about equality as a defense of affirmative action.

So: both the priestly and racial forms of communism are thoroughly postliberal, and both can be justified by attacks on Enlightenment thought, individualism, selfishness, pride, and so on. I’m not here arguing that these things are good, only that attacks on them do not need be made on behalf of what is good.

We should be on guard against attacks on liberalism that are not clearly made on behalf of Strong Citizenship and the rule of rational and able men. Postliberalism is not enough; it is a prerequisite. Postliberals might clear some ground, but it is the philosophic rightwing that provides the goal.

---

[1] Obviously the truly Christian outlook isn’t hypocritical: Christians admit they are sinful, are ashamed of the sin, and seek to rid themselves of sin—recommending to the public not sinful selves, but that part of themselves most redeemed by God.