Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Blake's avatar

This is an important theme that postliberals would be wise to consider. There is some debate on the postliberal right about how to approach this issue. Some see our founding as fundamentally liberal (enlightenment-style), but then explain that national constitutions legitimately develop over time. The approach taken here, however, connects us to a legitimately ordered liberty and tradition. This approach is surely stronger, as it requires no hard break from our past. Not to mention, this approach seems much closer to reality, even if there were among our founders some who favored enlightenment-style abstract liberty.

Expand full comment
Beast Mode's avatar

I think it important to distinguish between America in the abstract and in the concrete.

Postliberalism seems to be FOR the people who live in America. So, it is on that sense very concretely pro-American.

The status quo by contrast wish to put the people concretely in the service to their idea of America.

It's been said elsewhere, but as far as abstractions go, the 'idea' of America is the primacy of Potency over Act, the imaginary over the concrete.

Right-liberals frequently bemoan that there should be no 'hyphenated Americans'. I think the distinction made here goes a long way in explaining what ought be obvious. 'Hyphenated Americans' are inflecting their concrete heritage because America as 'an idea' doesn't actually suffice for most people.

On this note, I'm not convinced the English tradition is a sufficient rallying point for post-liberalism.

The point that we can dismiss many of the founders because they varied amongst themselves what the American project was is well taken, and I'd just as soon apply it to Burke as well.

It is true that America was colonized by the English, but this overlooks the significant, albeit failed, projects of the French and Spanish crowns.

Is the English political project compelling enough to provide the unity for the country?

You write that America moved from an idea of liberty that entailed a 'we ought' to one that declared 'we will'. How was this affected?

It seems to me that the abstraction still remains critical.

Post-liberalism has two fronts to fight on: modernist and post-modernist.

Liberalism is a political expression of Modernism, or rational skepticism. The 'we ought' is implicitly prohibited under Liberal government.

Post-modernism, or radical, irrational skepticism is out of the bag and neither left or right liberals know what to do about it. This is precisely because post-modernism corrodes meta-narratives and that is what is at issue. An appeal to the English tradition does not seem to be the compelling implement to overcome it

But you make a useful distinction here and it seems prudent to call into question the modernist American ideal as untenable.

That leaves the question of what can defeat post-modernism?

Implicitly it is suggested here and it lies within a 'concrete' view of America. It is a teleological view of man and society.

It seems simple enough that America is FOR the people that live there. Certain political figures have made successful inroads on this appeal.

Beyond that it is admittedly a hard sell to convince a populace accustomed to abstract individual liberty of the existence of real and universal human goods but it seems to me an easier sell than re-hyphenating ourselves as English.

That said, keep up the great work!

Expand full comment

No posts