Ozbiljno o konzervativizmu

In the first few years of Donald Trump’s term, a political movement bubbled up purporting to speak to a political right that had broken with the “dead consensus” of “fusionism” — the marriage of free markets and religious social conservatism that has dominated the Republican Party for decades. While there had been challenges to fusionism before, certain once-fringe intellectuals saw in the Trump administration a distinct departure.

Of the many boosters who viewed Trump as a consensus-shattering figure, the group that earned the most airtime was the so-called postliberals. Figures such as Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Ahmari, and Adrian Vermeule — an odd assortment of academics and commentators — believed that America’s future could only be secured by building a bigger welfare state, but one founded on a conservative Christian conception of the common good. Their aim was, in the words of Ahmari, “to fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.”

We now know that this institutional revolution did not come to pass, or, at least, that it was something altogether different than the revolution promised. However, when prophecy fails, a redoubling of faith often follows. During the Joe Biden administration postliberal critiques have become almost expected for any aspiring right-wing talking head or senator. If one were to believe the talking points of various Republicans, it is they who now bear the standard of the American worker.

It is in this context that Deneen, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, has written Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future, meant as something of an activist manifesto for the movement. The book’s many faults are the faults of the movement more generally: it only further reaffirms the contradictions and pitfalls of the conservative critique of the liberal status quo.