Excellent essay. Couple small quibbles…there has been no small bit of progress in taming the courts since Warren. Better judges gave us Heller, McDonald, Bruen, etc. and an originalist SCOTUS, albeit one that is afraid to undue precedent perhaps to much. A few other victories exist, like the end of wage and price controls as a feasible political idea. That said, I think you’re right and the authors want to go back to 1995, but a fictional version like in The West Wing, where the rot wasn’t already showing.
Catholics, Orthodox, and the remaining real Lutherans are alien to the Anglo Protestant character of the American Republic. That requires humility and gratitude from us.
And granted that the "anti"-Federalist position remains a long-shot: Nonetheless we serve our nation best by being most honestly Catholic, Lutheran, and Orthodox than by hewing at the roots of our theology.
Only then can our national edict of tolerance survive. It might not, outside the individual States.
It turns out that America's wide and dense associational life (e.g. they several kinds of Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans organizations, but lots more of a diversified sort, even Chinatown ones) were deeply integrated with its economic, governmental, and cultural management functions of the old system. A key enabler of this was their roles in capital allocation. The modern academe tells us they were terrible at that role, it turns out theres indisputable evidence that simply cannot be true, they were a very significant share of the investment decision making in decision making related to things ranging from infrastructure to science R&D to culture funding; America was very good at all those things
It also turns out these were structurally generated the whole, time, with a group of groups known as the Jacksonians updating their generating structures for modernity and locking them in for hundreds of years. Americans were told at that time that world had become too advanced, and that they were just dying a natural death; Americans pointed out that the structures they were setting up were also, quite old, in fact Americans pointed out that the actual financial mechanics of the system they were told was brand new and an inevitable outcome of modernity, could be somewhat fairly argued to have direct lineage to Bronze Age Ziggurats (really actually, its interesting how they described them) and so wasnt new, it was in fact just a different old institutional mode and lineage. And that all institutional linages and the broader systems that they are contained within (but different lineages require compatible systems which can differ) are all updated over time in practical functionings to fit condition changes
"The main direction for this argument is the more integralist states of times past brought conflict and strife, and the ascent of liberal republics finally brought the necessary stability. Of course, politics is never orderly, and this attempt to portray hundreds of years Medieval Christendom as a mess of instability and constant warring is jarring, given liberal republics have shown themselves to be far more unstable. The Republic after the French Revolution didn’t even last a generation before turning into a dictatorship ..."
It is interesting to note that, if one looks back to Medieval Christendom, before Liberalism became a distinct and well-defined ideology, governments that resembled more an ante litteram Liberal state were not more stable than governments that we would call integralist. In the Late Middle Ages, Italian city states, characterised by a large participation of the people to the administration of the city and a remarkable level of personal freedom (for the time, although not quite at the level of a 20th century 'Liberal' state), were not particularly stable when compared to other contemporary governments nor in absolute terms. On the contrary, they were plagued by political factions and violence. E.g., If you compare Florence and the Pontifical State in the 13th cent., I would say that the Pontifical State was more stable, although less 'Liberal'.
WW2 wasnt won by Liberalism, or Conservatism, or Centrism, it was won by the previously existing western-Western system (America’s version) that was just coordinated (far more often than what we’re told by horizontal coordination structures with people typically competed against each other selflessly working together temporarily on a shared single project).
the 1930s both the Democratic and Republican Parties were still decentralized, publicly accessible and internally contestable mass member party and the country it operated in was still a widely and deeply federated system with legal/regulatory variability, policy variability, local governments were still the biggest fiscal actors, the economy was still one structurally biased towards being one dominated by geographically dispersed and redundant diversified mid sized firms, banking/finance was still structurally locally anchored and relative to today quite pluralized, education was decentralized, etc.
We entered a multidecadal transformation period after WW2. Jim Crow and the good Civil Rights stuff were actually really were done bottom with tools of the Old System, and then were hijacked in the latter 1960s by the actually existing Liberalism that began to really get up and running as more than a fringe (despite occupying some corners of major government and major corporations for a while before, they were still fringe) thing.
They system that then emerged failed. It saved itself by Center setting up an aegis that assembled capital “G” Globalization and planetary economic central planning powers that established intensive economic extraction structures. The old system uplifted territories and and everyone was better off. Liberalism grafted one of the versions of the s**ty Old European empires onto modernity, veered humanity of the track so many had fought centuries to get it on, just to preserve some powerful special interest groups who managed to entrench themselves because of the policy changes post WW2 (which seems to have required WW2 to happen).
Now its finally, like all the s**ty old systems it resembles, its failing, but it has no more gimmicks.
Constitutional democracy has lasted less than 300 years under the most charitable interpretation, and its been a bumpy ride. Monarchy lasted for 1200 and brought us out of the fall of Rome into the modern era. But democracy has the best historical record? Please.
There is something pitiable for the American that by observing the liberal project as a failure, or at least a disappointment, it feels like a rejection of the revolution to identify that the flaws were inherent to the project. And if the project was inherently flawed, what does it mean to be American, exactly?
Many conservative polemics are attempts to reconcile the American Revolution with the modern condition, and this book seems to be another example. I think the postliberal can see past such a hang up and that is what will make it responsive and successful in the way the Church is (development of doctrine, perhaps?), rather than ideologically stagnated.
Excellent piece, but you should put your writing through AI before you post to catch the editing mistakes. I think it would help the floor of the arguments
Pulled tens of millions of children out of poverty
Developed modern medicine and dental hygiene Dramatically raised standards of living"
At most half of those are goo things. The second isn't even true, USSR post-Breznev was run by its Trotskyist enemies and got blown up from the inside.
I hv b ovv v i hv vi go ok ko jk ko b iv b on v on on him no ko jk ok oh chip oh kkk kk oh oh kk oh oh jk kkhikhkkkvkb Cj iikbkblookkkhoppoppppoh bb lvl
Surely Catholic integralism is discredited by the fact that most Catholic integralists dislike the pope? It is freaking hilarious that these people both advocate for the state to be directed towards Catholic ends and lose their cookies when the pope criticises the death penalty.
I think there is a genuine criticism in that it appears the integralist movement is out of step with Catholic leadership. Indeed, from what data we have, the early-to-mid 20th century featured a glut of clergy that were advancing the Church into a kind of reconciliation with liberalism and its own institutional decline.
But for the integralist, the Catholic leadership is not defined by such characters that are increasingly discredited and in-decline probably *because* they were attempting such a reconciliation. I think what is more interesting is how the coming generation of catholic leadership is a conservative revival. Such perceived outstep will be increasingly less common, at least in America.
It is also worth pointing out the Catholic Church's concerns are global in outlook, perhaps uniquely so, and does not necessarily favor Western interests. This maybe leads to a confused priority list, but a cynical person should take care that Catholicism is interpreted differently in different places and a good leader is careful in how what he says is received.
It is also possible to just have a poor leader in the seat who says something debatable as if it were fact, like that the conditions to justly use the death penalty do not exist. For every news story of a priest or bishop criticizing the peoples' protest against a mosque construction, there is another asking the faithful at Mass to pray God stops the construction of a Mormon temple (based on my personal experience at least). There are good and poor leaders within the Church, and focusing on any singular figure may confuse what is actually happening.
Excellent essay. Couple small quibbles…there has been no small bit of progress in taming the courts since Warren. Better judges gave us Heller, McDonald, Bruen, etc. and an originalist SCOTUS, albeit one that is afraid to undue precedent perhaps to much. A few other victories exist, like the end of wage and price controls as a feasible political idea. That said, I think you’re right and the authors want to go back to 1995, but a fictional version like in The West Wing, where the rot wasn’t already showing.
Catholics, Orthodox, and the remaining real Lutherans are alien to the Anglo Protestant character of the American Republic. That requires humility and gratitude from us.
And granted that the "anti"-Federalist position remains a long-shot: Nonetheless we serve our nation best by being most honestly Catholic, Lutheran, and Orthodox than by hewing at the roots of our theology.
Only then can our national edict of tolerance survive. It might not, outside the individual States.
(Not Catholic myself, btw)
(1) The Liberals have been lying from day one.
It turns out that America's wide and dense associational life (e.g. they several kinds of Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans organizations, but lots more of a diversified sort, even Chinatown ones) were deeply integrated with its economic, governmental, and cultural management functions of the old system. A key enabler of this was their roles in capital allocation. The modern academe tells us they were terrible at that role, it turns out theres indisputable evidence that simply cannot be true, they were a very significant share of the investment decision making in decision making related to things ranging from infrastructure to science R&D to culture funding; America was very good at all those things
It also turns out these were structurally generated the whole, time, with a group of groups known as the Jacksonians updating their generating structures for modernity and locking them in for hundreds of years. Americans were told at that time that world had become too advanced, and that they were just dying a natural death; Americans pointed out that the structures they were setting up were also, quite old, in fact Americans pointed out that the actual financial mechanics of the system they were told was brand new and an inevitable outcome of modernity, could be somewhat fairly argued to have direct lineage to Bronze Age Ziggurats (really actually, its interesting how they described them) and so wasnt new, it was in fact just a different old institutional mode and lineage. And that all institutional linages and the broader systems that they are contained within (but different lineages require compatible systems which can differ) are all updated over time in practical functionings to fit condition changes
Nice, but this was a missed palindrome opportunity if you had named it, "Why 'Why Postliberalism Failed' Failed"
Dang!
Like most of Acton's work that's not explicitly catechetical, the book is meant as innoculation, not engagement or thought.
"The main direction for this argument is the more integralist states of times past brought conflict and strife, and the ascent of liberal republics finally brought the necessary stability. Of course, politics is never orderly, and this attempt to portray hundreds of years Medieval Christendom as a mess of instability and constant warring is jarring, given liberal republics have shown themselves to be far more unstable. The Republic after the French Revolution didn’t even last a generation before turning into a dictatorship ..."
It is interesting to note that, if one looks back to Medieval Christendom, before Liberalism became a distinct and well-defined ideology, governments that resembled more an ante litteram Liberal state were not more stable than governments that we would call integralist. In the Late Middle Ages, Italian city states, characterised by a large participation of the people to the administration of the city and a remarkable level of personal freedom (for the time, although not quite at the level of a 20th century 'Liberal' state), were not particularly stable when compared to other contemporary governments nor in absolute terms. On the contrary, they were plagued by political factions and violence. E.g., If you compare Florence and the Pontifical State in the 13th cent., I would say that the Pontifical State was more stable, although less 'Liberal'.
WW2 wasnt won by Liberalism, or Conservatism, or Centrism, it was won by the previously existing western-Western system (America’s version) that was just coordinated (far more often than what we’re told by horizontal coordination structures with people typically competed against each other selflessly working together temporarily on a shared single project).
the 1930s both the Democratic and Republican Parties were still decentralized, publicly accessible and internally contestable mass member party and the country it operated in was still a widely and deeply federated system with legal/regulatory variability, policy variability, local governments were still the biggest fiscal actors, the economy was still one structurally biased towards being one dominated by geographically dispersed and redundant diversified mid sized firms, banking/finance was still structurally locally anchored and relative to today quite pluralized, education was decentralized, etc.
We entered a multidecadal transformation period after WW2. Jim Crow and the good Civil Rights stuff were actually really were done bottom with tools of the Old System, and then were hijacked in the latter 1960s by the actually existing Liberalism that began to really get up and running as more than a fringe (despite occupying some corners of major government and major corporations for a while before, they were still fringe) thing.
They system that then emerged failed. It saved itself by Center setting up an aegis that assembled capital “G” Globalization and planetary economic central planning powers that established intensive economic extraction structures. The old system uplifted territories and and everyone was better off. Liberalism grafted one of the versions of the s**ty Old European empires onto modernity, veered humanity of the track so many had fought centuries to get it on, just to preserve some powerful special interest groups who managed to entrench themselves because of the policy changes post WW2 (which seems to have required WW2 to happen).
Now its finally, like all the s**ty old systems it resembles, its failing, but it has no more gimmicks.
Constitutional democracy has lasted less than 300 years under the most charitable interpretation, and its been a bumpy ride. Monarchy lasted for 1200 and brought us out of the fall of Rome into the modern era. But democracy has the best historical record? Please.
Exceptional. Thank you. Godspeed
There is something pitiable for the American that by observing the liberal project as a failure, or at least a disappointment, it feels like a rejection of the revolution to identify that the flaws were inherent to the project. And if the project was inherently flawed, what does it mean to be American, exactly?
Many conservative polemics are attempts to reconcile the American Revolution with the modern condition, and this book seems to be another example. I think the postliberal can see past such a hang up and that is what will make it responsive and successful in the way the Church is (development of doctrine, perhaps?), rather than ideologically stagnated.
Excellent piece, but you should put your writing through AI before you post to catch the editing mistakes. I think it would help the floor of the arguments
Lol, the flow of your arguments
"Won the Second World War
Won the Cold War
Landed on the Moon
Ended Jim Crow racism
Pulled tens of millions of children out of poverty
Developed modern medicine and dental hygiene Dramatically raised standards of living"
At most half of those are goo things. The second isn't even true, USSR post-Breznev was run by its Trotskyist enemies and got blown up from the inside.
I hv b ovv v i hv vi go ok ko jk ko b iv b on v on on him no ko jk ok oh chip oh kkk kk oh oh kk oh oh jk kkhikhkkkvkb Cj iikbkblookkkhoppoppppoh bb lvl
Surely Catholic integralism is discredited by the fact that most Catholic integralists dislike the pope? It is freaking hilarious that these people both advocate for the state to be directed towards Catholic ends and lose their cookies when the pope criticises the death penalty.
Most are enthusiasts of Pope Leo XIII's social encyclicals.
Fine, but Leo XIII can't talk back. They would absolutely not like to be subject to Leo XIV telling them what they don't want to hear.
I think there is a genuine criticism in that it appears the integralist movement is out of step with Catholic leadership. Indeed, from what data we have, the early-to-mid 20th century featured a glut of clergy that were advancing the Church into a kind of reconciliation with liberalism and its own institutional decline.
But for the integralist, the Catholic leadership is not defined by such characters that are increasingly discredited and in-decline probably *because* they were attempting such a reconciliation. I think what is more interesting is how the coming generation of catholic leadership is a conservative revival. Such perceived outstep will be increasingly less common, at least in America.
It is also worth pointing out the Catholic Church's concerns are global in outlook, perhaps uniquely so, and does not necessarily favor Western interests. This maybe leads to a confused priority list, but a cynical person should take care that Catholicism is interpreted differently in different places and a good leader is careful in how what he says is received.
It is also possible to just have a poor leader in the seat who says something debatable as if it were fact, like that the conditions to justly use the death penalty do not exist. For every news story of a priest or bishop criticizing the peoples' protest against a mosque construction, there is another asking the faithful at Mass to pray God stops the construction of a Mormon temple (based on my personal experience at least). There are good and poor leaders within the Church, and focusing on any singular figure may confuse what is actually happening.