Liberal politics definition
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While these right-wing post-liberals are skeptical of big government and recognize that individualism and statism go hand-in-hand, they have a tendency to employ state power as a moral instrument of right-wing causes in society-most recently, by punishing liberal universities with endowment tax “indulgences” at a time when college tuition is too expensive for most young people to afford. This veiled statism is not an end in itself, as Continetti points out. What the post-liberals seem to call for is the use of government to recapture society from the Left. They argue that, even as conservatives defended the independence of civil society from state power, the Left took over Hollywood, the academy, the media, and the courts. As Josh Hawley puts it, “though proclaims liberty, it destroys the life that makes liberty possible.” By promoting virtue ahead of rights, these post-liberals hope to create a space where the duties and values of associational life enable freedom and the common good to flourish side-by-side-a valiant goal no matter their political inclinations.Īccording to Continetti, they also have an intriguing willingness to turn to the state for salvation: Post-liberals say that the distinction between state and society is illusory.
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These individuals share an antipathy toward liberalism and modernity and believe that virtue and duty precede freedom in society. Among these are Josh Hawley, who opposes liberalism’s “Pelagian vision” Yoram Hazony, who finds virtue in nationalism Rod Dreher, who promotes a Benedictine retreat from liberal modernity Sohrab Ahmari, who critiques the “David French-ism” of mainstream American Republicans and Patrick Deneen, who calls liberalism a failure-because it has succeeded. Personal freedom has ended up in the mainstreaming of pornography, alcohol, drug, and gambling addiction, abortion, single-parent families, and the repression of orthodox religious practice and conscience.Ĭontinetti then lists a wide array of conservative politicians, activists, and commentators that share this particular post-liberal outlook. Economic freedom has brought about a global system of trade and finance that has outsourced jobs, shifted resources to the metropolitan coasts, and obscured its self-seeking under the veneer of social justice. In a timely article about the New American Right, Matthew Continetti provides his conception of right-wing post-liberalism: Post-liberals say that freedom has become a destructive end-in-itself. Similarly, they reject the universal, individualist, meliorist, and egalitarian notions of liberalism because they believe that liberalism has failed to live up to these principles. For this reason, right-wing post-liberals put duty and virtue ahead of rights and liberty, and they have a tendency to rely on state power to enforce these duties and virtues. Right-wing post-liberals believe that humans are, by nature, relational beings who are better suited to pursuing virtue within their own communities than falling prey to the false promise of universal progress. This new brand of post-liberal politics can be divided into three strands-one on the Left, one on the Right, and one in the Center-which are united by their shared divergence from the core tenets of liberalism to varying degrees. As writers and thinkers from across the political spectrum start to look beyond these axioms, a number of commentators have attempted to identify and explain the core tenets of an emerging post-liberal politics. Post-liberalism is a vague term that only denotes politics after liberalism-and after the “ End of History“-without specifying what the content of this politics will be or clarifying how far this post-liberal withdrawal from liberal principles will go.Īccording to the political philosopher John Gray, these liberal principles assume that humans on a universal basis are individualistic creatures that are destined to experience progress along meliorist lines and create better, more egalitarian societies that value the equal worth of each person. Isolating a precise definition of post-liberal politics is difficult. Some may mention post-liberal theology, others may reference post-liberal peace-building, and many will discuss the prospect of organizing a genuinely post-liberal politics. Say the words “post-liberal,” and you are bound to get a host of responses.