Why I Am Not a Postliberal

A traditionalist abhors a hermeneutic of rupture.

It’s time for some politics here at Christendom Reborn. I’m taking a deep breath as I type that.

Last week I reveled in philosophy, a subject that brings me joy. Politics brings me… other emotions. Nevertheless, it’s necessary to take up the subject, because combatting despair is one of the major goals of this substack, and politics is clearly one of our primary sources of despair. More importantly, it’s central to the thesis of Christendom Reborn. One cannot understand how Christianity has survived so many centuries without considering its capacity to weather major political transitions. Arguably, we are in the middle of such a period of transition.

The central pillar of my political discussion will be “God and Caesar,” which I take to be the key to Christian dynamism and adaptability. Jesus’ command to “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s (Matthew 22:21)” has been foundational to Christian political history (and theory), though in fact, this is in many ways a very confusing command whose implications are hard to discern.

That however will be the subject of the next essay. Today I need to do some preliminary work by saying a bit about my own position in the contemporary political landscape. I’m well aware that this can be a fraught question. Politics is after all intensely factional, and like everyone who’s worked for some years in political media, I have both friends and (unfortunately) a few enemies. I don’t want to keep people guessing as to where I fall. I spent quite awhile musing on how to handle this and finally decided that the best way was also the most straightforward: Perhaps I should just explain myself. In an essay dedicated specifically to that purpose.

Thus, I am here going to explain why I am not a postliberal. Though, given my background and other commitments, it might seem like I should be.

“Postliberalism” refers broadly to a political-philosophical movement that has emerged over the last ten years, primarily on the political right, which holds that the liberal order has failed and that it is now time to move on to something else. An obvious question arises here: Is that claim descriptive or normative? Truthfully, it’s hard to say. Though postliberals do tend to argue that the collapse of liberalism is either inevitable or a fait accompli, and thus not worth fighting, they also seem quite eager at times to help the process along. Persuading people to open their eyes to the bleakness of our present situation is a regular theme of postliberal literature, but those arguments tend to flip very readily into demands for dramatic action. Postliberals seem to want to be the vanguard of the new order that they claim is emerging.

To foster that “awakening” and corresponding action, they devote considerable energy to expounding on characteristically modern mistakes (hyper-individualism, an obsession with autonomy, free market “fundmentalism”) and particular evils they see following from those errors, such as communal and familial breakdown, the collapse of religiosity, the assault on traditional masculinity, and the rise and advance of progressive ideology. Postliberals have many internal disagreements and factions, but the glue that holds them (somewhat) together is a shared belief in an emerging new order, paired with a deep aversion to “wokeness” (even if, in horseshoe fashion, they often circle back to pluck certain strategies or concepts from the progressive playbook, employing them for their own ends).

There are multiple camps within this broader movement. Integralists call for a close re-integration of church and state, which explicitly acknowledges the primacy of the City of God. National Conservatives want to re-prioritize the nation-state as the proper source of order and community, over and against more global or universalist views; beyond strict borders and economic protectionism they also want nations to embrace a more robust creedal identity. There are various populist strains focused especially on the evils of capitalism and free trade, and on the need for labor unions, industrial policy, “family wages,” and other policies meant to solidify a “traditional” (read: reminiscent of 1950s suburbia) lifestyle as normative. There are also of course many weird fringe groups that clearly thrill to many elements of postliberalism, whether or not leading postliberals desire the association: the monarchists and the Putinistas, the white nationalists and the Tradwives, and all the various creations of the Manosphere, and those troops of bright-eyed political scientists eager to celebrate Carl Schmitt.

There is such a thing as leftist postliberalism. I’m a conservative though, so I’m not going to get into it here. No one would ever have expected me to end up there.

Where do I fit in this landscape, though? Glancing back at my 25, 30, or even 35-year-old self, I look, even to my own eyes, like a natural fit for one or another of these groups. In my 20s I became enamored with philosophy, studying with Alasdair MacIntyre at Notre Dame. I went on to write a dissertation on Scholasticism (specifically the moral philosophy of St. Bonaventure), and along the way converted to Catholicism in a traditional Latin Mass parish. I devoured the work of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), and at one time could discourse with energy on the organic development of both doctrine and liturgy, and why Vatican II created a destructive “hermeneutic of rupture.”

This term is likely unfamiliar to people who haven’t devoted countless hours to arguing about Vatican II, but it’s important for my narrative so I’ll go ahead and explain. The idea is that sharp shocks in the Church’s tradition – particularly concerning liturgy – sever our connection to the past, diminishing the power of teaching and ritual to connect us to transcendent truths. That’s bad in itself, but as people become attached to the new paradigm, they themselves become increasingly hostile to tradition, which is now perceived as a threat to established order. A vicious cycle develops in which people become increasingly alienated from elements of tradition that should be uplifting and nourishing, viewing them as a threat instead of a resource. Ratzinger complained that this “hermeneutic of rupture” had followed in the wake of Vatican II, spawning dangerous errors and bad liturgical practices that the Council itself never intended. This anti-traditional “spirit of Vatican” worked all sorts of mischief in the decades following the Council, which Ratzinger/Benedict was eager to ameliorate.

My 30-year-old self could wax very eloquent on this subject! And related ones. I was an Aristotelian Thomist through and through, fully on board with a meaty metaphysics, robust teleology, reverence for tradition, and a deep mistrust of modernity.

My life as a political writer began the Tea Party era, first in general-access forums and eventually in more recognizable right-wing media outlets. I was very much a social conservative, both pro-life and an advocate for traditional marriage, so that was my bread and butter in the early days. There were also some “mom life” pieces. However, I did run into trouble sometimes insofar as thick, anti-modern Aristotelianism was often at odds with the enthusiasms of that particular moment.

Limited government was everything in those days. It was the era of Hayek and Rand, defund Big Bird, and “Yes, I did too build that.” As a contributor at The Federalist, I remember trying to talk to people about Richard John Neuhaus and the evils of the naked public square (huh?), and arguing that child tax credits might actually be good (away with your nefarious social engineering!). I was into “Reform Conservatism,” which many people back then considered irresponsibly big-state. Many people patronizingly explained to me, an interloper from the Catholic philosophy world, that all these issues would work themselves out if we could only “get the government out” of almost everything. Save all that “values” stuff for your church or your living room.

My experiences of libertarian populism left me fairly cynical about libertarianism, which seemed to me like a narrow and sophomoric viewpoint. I did believe that the debt was a problem, and that entitlements were unsustainable. I didn’t hate free-market economics. But I was eager to argue that “common good” was a meaningful phrase. That Economics Isn’t Everything. That societies have a character and a culture, which needed to be protected. An Aristotelian among the Randians! That was my Tea Party-era self.

How amazed I would have been to hear that a few years hence, many of my favorite phrases would be in vogue on the right, while I myself would now be camped out on the margins… with the classical liberals! Life is full of surprises.

The story of how that happened needn’t be told in gory detail. It’s pretty familiar, and my experience wasn’t particularly distinctive. In 2016 the political right blew up, and many people found ourselves unable to continue in our places of employment. To be clear, I was never explicitly driven out, nor punished for picking the “wrong” political team. People were switching camps willy-nilly in those days with few professional repercussions; it was a kind of “open borders” moment for political factionalism. But, I couldn’t stay where I was without arguing things I believed to be untrue, and defending things I believed to be wrong. So I decamped, and spent a few years knocking on virtual doors, throwing things against walls, and strategizing ways to fill the holes in my family budget. In the end, the door that swung all the way open was… at Liberty Fund. An organization deeply rooted in the Western tradition, but also in free market economics and classical liberalism. It had its own sources of funding and was thus able to resist populist takeover. And just like that, I found myself exploring the classical liberalism more seriously, exactly as the mainstream right abandoned it.

From a career standpoint it was atrocious timing. I seem to have a knack for living in irons, sails perpetually facing into the political wind. From an intellectual standpoint though, it was rather interesting and made for a good education. At Liberty Fund I encountered real economists, real political theorists, people who could articulate concepts from classical liberalism with a sophistication far beyond what I’d encountered in the clickbait media. I began to appreciate more of the nuances of classical liberal concerns about state overreach. Why the bureaucratic state was the “road to serfdom.” Why free markets and social trust are generally connected in complex ways.

Meanwhile, Over There, arguments uncomfortably similar to my own were being pressed in clownish and melodramatic forms, often abusively. This was also a period, you see, in which the New Right was engineering a kind of hostile takeover of conservative institutions. Many “Rotting-Flesh Reaganites,” unwilling to jettison the older conservative tradition with sufficient enthusiasm, were purged from the mainstream movement and ended up rubbing shoulders with the likes of me over on the political margins. It was quite the bracing inversion of my previous experience.

And I learned some things. One was that politics doesn’t always bring out the best in people! Go figure. Another was that I should take more trouble to “steelman” arguments more rigorously before dismissing them and shallow and sophomoric. Naturally, if the contest is “Alasdair MacIntyre vs College Republican-level rehash of Atlas Shrugged,” Aristotelians will easily emerge as the champions, but that’s not really the debate that anyone should wish to see.

More substantively, I learned that American conservatives had reasons for integrating strong elements of classical liberalism into their political tradition. And none of those reasons had meaningfully changed; all that had changed were the political fashions and relevant incentive structures. The concerns of Adam Smith or Friedrich Hayek are as relevant as ever. I read Frank Meyer now and find him almost prophetic in his more eloquent passages, though of course it should be acknowledged that I got a particularly “hands-on” education in fusionism, and it’s perhaps unsurprising if Meyer occasionally feels like a kindred spirit.

I still would not call myself a classical liberal. My big-picture commitments (not just the political ones, but also metaphysical, moral, and theological) are still recognizably Aristotelian. I love the Scholastics as much as ever (and since I personally studied them for many years, I feel no temptation to funnel them though a postliberal lens). I remain a deep admirer of men like MacIntyre and Ratzinger, and am still very much absorbed by the question: How should we live now, given the many ways in which modern society alienates us from what is authentic and good?

I’m still a devout practicing Catholic! Still pro-life and pro-marriage! Still raising five sons in the faith, and eager to pursue Truth, Beauty, and Goodness!

But I now have a much deeper appreciation now of the perils of state overreach, the unsustainability of our entitlement state, and the importance of our constitutional tradition. I think I could say, truly, that I’ve learned to love liberty (not license!) in a way I didn’t before. I don’t believe any of that is incompatible with the Aristotelian tradition in which I was educated. There are certain insights, however, that the classical liberals reached more quickly and with greater penetration as modernity advanced. In part because the modern Caesar rose so quickly and forcefully that it was harder for the Aristotelians, with their teleological “good-government” perspective, to immediately perceive the extent of the danger, or get a handle on what was happening.

Classical liberalism has also made real mistakes! On the level of metaphysics and moral theory their early thinkers have some serious problems. We can recognize and diagnose those without denying the value of genuinely important insights that have come to us most clearly through that tradition. I mentioned last week how, as an eager-eyed undergraduate student of MacIntyre’s, I “embraced the mission” of trying to synthesize whatever truths I could find, whatever the sources. It turns out, classical liberalism is one such source. Likewise modern economics.

The joke is very much on me here, of course. In reaching the conviction that the best of the Aristotelian and classically liberal traditions should be fused, I most certainly wasn’t blazing any trails. This is the core of the American conservative tradition, as once exemplified by figures like Bill Buckley, Frank Meyer, Richard Weaver, Russell Kirk… a long list, actually. Think of all the people the New Right has derisively tossed from the canon as out-of-touch has-beens, and you’ll mostly be looking at the people I was now learning to love. Belatedly. In middle age, after years of living mainly on the Aristotelian side of the line.

What I’m saying is, I wasn’t yet a rotting-flesh Reaganite when R.R. Reno popularized that phrase, but I sure am now.

The journey could have been fun, and sometimes was. But politics is frequently a nasty business, and our own moment is far from genteel. There are days when I feel deeply depressed thinking about all the missed opportunities, the torched brands, the alienated could-have-been allies. To a considerable extent I’m still sitting in irons, wondering which way the winds will blow next.

Having said that, there are a lot of signs at this point that postliberalism is crumbling. It would be nice in some ways, despite everything, to circle back and reconnect with more reasonable members of the postliberal camp whose premises and commitments are (I fully recognize!) not necessarily so different from my own. The distinction between “a liberal who recognizes the need for reforms” and “a postliberal who wants to keep some parts of the old order” might seem subtle, or even non-existent, to a person walking into the room in 2026. Perhaps this is mostly about personal history, old grievances, unhealed wounds? Maybe we should all try to put the past behind us and be friends again?

I don’t think it’s quite that simple though. There’s still a real gulf between liberals and postliberals, even the more reasonable among them. I would characterize the problem as “a hermeneutic of rupture.” We can’t come back together so long as postliberals are determined to reject a long-standing American conservative tradition that we still need. I think the not-so-amicable divorce has ungrounded postliberals in ways that recognizably mirror the post-Vatican-II dynamic that Ratzinger once described. When you forcibly separate yourself from a tradition, the very rejection of that tradition becomes a destabilizing element within the movement itself. That instability can yield all sorts of ugly fruits.

More concretely: You can’t reach a reasonable, grounded perspective on contemporary politics if you’re determined to treat economics as a joke science and a tool for elite exploitation. If it’s an article of faith for you that “conservatism hasn’t conserved anything” and that liberalism is broken beyond repair. Looking more specifically at Christianity and its place within the Western political tradition, you’re unlikely to get anywhere good if the rejection of limited government logic is itself a constituent part of your view. Separating God and Caesar is the hallmark of Christian political theory! It’s very hard to have a productive conversation about that if one’s starting point is “a deep aversion to liberalism and all its works.” Within a modern context, there really isn’t any method of restraining Caesar that doesn’t come in some way through the liberal tradition.

Taking shots at postliberals is not the goal of Christendom Reborn. But I do want to think constructively and fruitfully about how Christendom can thrive. My experience suggests that postliberal hang-ups tend to derail that conversation. They’re not accustomed to framing the questions in helpful ways.

So what is the right way to frame the conversation? That’s where we’re going next. Enough about me, let’s talk about Christendom!