‘Either post-liberalism is something like, in [Patrick] Deneen’s case, a continuation of a certain sort of socially conservative Christian politics that has hardly been unfamiliar to American politics for decades, and so does not represent anything particularly new or radically challenging to liberalism. Or post-liberalism is a more full-blooded and genuine challenge to the liberal order. But when it takes that mode, like in [Adrian] Vermeule’s work, it becomes driven more by an irate, passionate fury against liberalism that ends up detaching it so far from reality that I do not think it deserves to be taken seriously as a political theory. It’s more like fantasy at that point. Indeed, I think a lot of the New Right could be described in that way. And while fantasies undoubtedly have a sort of causal force in politics in mobilizing and directing the people’s more negative emotions, this is not the same thing as a genuine intellectual challenge.’
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‘Vermeule recognizes that there is little support for post-liberalism today. Most people are too corrupted by liberalism and the liberal elite to know what is really good for them. They must be brought to see what is good for them. Their beliefs and values must be changed, through the use of political power (to be grasped via non-democratic means) and the law, so that they are better aligned with what will bring them true human flourishing (the common good). We must be transformed. And when we are, we will come to recognize that we have been brought to the light and thank our post-liberal rulers for having delivered us from moral error. … Once you think politics no longer needs to be bound by people’s actual beliefs and values, as Vermeule does, then essentially your imagination is free to go wherever it wants. People, actual people, become nothing but abstractions, and the effects on them are inconsequential… [I]ntegralism is basically the idea that the Church should have authority over the State, at least in the pursuit of humans’ spiritual ends… Vermeule shrugs off claims that integralism is highly unrealistic in highly pluralistic societies like America by saying that once the right people get their hands on the levers of power, they will use that to make people more supportive of post-liberalism. However, what integralism also requires is that the Church is willing to do its bit, so to speak, by wanting to literally get involved in the ruling of countries. And to say that the Catholic Church has neither the appetite nor capacity for that would be an understatement. But Vermeule is entreating people to act as if the Pope were there just waiting for integralists to take over the US government so he can start governing citizens’ souls, which is so far removed from reality that I think we are in the realm of literal fantasy.’
UD is intrigued that Harvard University, of all places, harbors and honors Mr UFO (now a high ranking Trump official) and harbors and honors The Madness of King Adrian.