Reaction, "Revitalism" & Revolution
The future of American conservatism, and the essence of postliberalism, lies in being reactionaries who seek to revive what was lost.
The American Conservative recently reported on the rising interest in postliberalism among conservative youth, a trend made clear by the audience at Patrick Deneen’s recent lecture on the campus of The Catholic University of America. As a member of the audience and the young postliberal cohort, the reason for my attraction to the postliberal idea is likely shared by a number of my peers: My thought was — and is — that the furor following Deneen’s seminal work on liberalism had found a final resting place in the establishment of a “postliberal movement.”
In the years after the publication of Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed we saw an enormous churning as the movement adopted their new Gospel, the classical liberal intelligentsia reacted with measured caution, and many feelings were hurt in both camps. The growth of a kind of established postliberal movement seemed to be the settling of the waters as the debate concluded decisively in favor of Deneen’s thesis, though not without qualifications.
Such a movement of young conservatives within the structures of established government, shorn of the baggage of both separatist hyper-integralism and pseudo-conservative RINOism, seemed to herald the rebirth of an historically meaningful conservatism. Upon seeing these fair portents, today’s postliberal youth are prompted to reflect on what their conservatism means: What is conservatism, and how can postliberalism bring it into a new day in the sun?
But despite what you might be told by the Reaganian Right, their brand of conservatism has never truly had its day in the sun. The past two and a half centuries of Western history have been defined by the decided rout of conservatism by the great turning engines of revolution whose rotation began in France in 1789.
The failure of liberalism is not the triumph of conservatism. Liberalism indeed has failed, for two reasons: (1) Because of its ontological inadequacy for governing political life and (2) because conservatism has failed to restrain the ideology. The idea of conservatism exists within the framework of liberalism as a natural moderating reaction against its headlong slouch toward perdition. The failure of liberalism is also the triumph of liberalism over conservatism.
What is left for conservatively minded men and women when conservatism has suffered this great defeat, a defeat marked by the failure of the intellectual structure it inhabits and the eradication of the way of life it imagined? At a dinner party some weeks ago, when I told the host that I was a conservative, he asked me, “What exactly are you conserving?” To this question I gave some answer about hope and the restoration of a lost moral order — not an altogether awful sentiment — but his point shone through.
As David Azerrad remarked in an article this year:
Conservatism, as its very name indicates, presupposes a way of life or a regime worth conserving. It presupposes the existence of conservatives — people who feel at home in their own country — and of progressives — people who do not and therefore want to fundamentally change it.1
Azerrad goes on to claim that, with conservatism no longer being properly possible in a country entirely hostile to the conservative vision, conservatives are faced with little choice: “Serious conservatives — those who have the stomach to recognize how much ground they have lost and what the country has become — have no choice but to become ‘revitalizers.’”2 In short, Azerrad contends that the defeat of conservatism has reached its finality: “Conservatism” in the form it has been undertaken over the past fifty years is no longer politically viable, and those who would still hold fast to the orders of antiquity have no choice but to become “revitalists.”
Azerrad’s article rings true, though it may not be appealing to lovers of the Republican old guard. But, most relevant to young conservatives today is the simple, practical statement that Azerrad makes: Conservatism is now not just impossible theoretically, but it is impossible practically. Gone are the days in which a man and woman can raise their children according to their own conservative values in the relative security of the countryside. The Benedict Option is no longer practicable. This is what the final defeat of conservatism entails.
But Revitalism is not just a hip rebranding of conservatism to appeal to the youth of today. Nor is it simply a raising of the conservative banner of war — that has been tried before and found wanting. It is a true conversion of the conservative temperament:
What is needed in these times are not “unadventurous” men who express “appropriate gratefulness for what is available.” … Rather, we need bold men who will be spurred by the appropriate outrage at what has been taken from them and disgust at what the country has become to defund, humiliate, and marginalize the centers of power of the Left while building their own or reconquering lost ones.3
If the postliberal movement is to be successful, it does not need the plodding, moderating conservatives of the late-20th century, whose excess of temperance landed us in our current predicament. It does not need pusillanimous men degraded by an overweening sense of humility, nor by an inordinate longing for a life of seclusion as civilization topples around their hermitage. Postliberalism requires men and women who will willingly abandon the failed political establishment in order to salvage and resuscitate the moral and political order of our nation.
This is not a movement of despair, however. Discarding the failed strategies and reticent temperaments of Reagan conservatism, we rise to a greater and more perfect human hope that all is not lost, that man can build again. In the words of Burke, states may ebb and flow, and “at the very moment when some of them seemed plunged in unfathomable abysses of disgrace and disaster, they have suddenly emerged. They have begun a new course and opened a new reckoning, and even in the depths of their calamity and on the very ruins of their country have laid the foundations of a towering and durable greatness.”4
Postliberalism is not the conservatism of our fathers or grandfathers — how could it be? Its very name suggests that we recognize the failure of the current system and look toward the founding of a greater conservative order, not the conservation of the current state of affairs. Yet, our project is, without question, conservative; nowhere found in the postliberal psyche is a desire to throw ourselves headlong into the future, trusting vainly in innovation.
Postliberalism and 21st century conservatism, properly comprehended, is Revitalist: Our hope is that the realization of liberalism’s fall will allow for the rebirth of that which was lost and a reforming of that which was gained. And this is the nature of Don Colacho’s “Authentic Reactionary,”
If the progressive casts himself into the future, and the conservative into the past, the reactionary does not measure his anxieties with the history of yesterday or with the history of tomorrow. The reactionary does not extol what the next dawn must bring, nor is he terrified by the last shadows of the night. … The reactionary is not a nostalgic dreamer of a canceled past, but rather a hunter of sacred shades upon the eternal hills.5
Obviously, this is not all to say that postliberalism must alienate any “kind” of conservative; it is fundamentally conservative, though it must also eschew the sensibilities of late-20th century conservatism. Conservatism is still a necessary and useful term for identifying those who have not sworn their fealty to the tyranno-religious Left, and for those who still recognize the goodness of beauty and truth. But what is not useful is the losing, establishment conservative temperament — the habits and predilections of overcautious prudishness.
That is the purpose of Revitalism — not an overhauling of the innate principles of conservatism (those principles which are worth conserving), but an invigoration of that long stagnant idea with a spirit of defiance and active determination unto the end. It will not be our caution that defines us in the struggle for the soul of the West, nor our compromise or our indifference; it will be our active and fervent striving against the vile forces of evil which dominate the present age.
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Azerrad, David, “Revitalizing the Right,” The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues: Vol. 24: Iss. 1, Article 2 (2024).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Burke, Edmund, “Letters on a Regicide Peace,” 1795.
Davila, Nicolas Gomez, “The Authentic Reactionary,” 1995.
There's not a single word anywhere in this piece about public policy. I have zero idea what you actually intend "postliberalism" to stand for based on what you wrote. Deenan himself, a poli-sci Ph.D, is little better in this regard. In reading "postliberal" content, I have picked on two general trends. (1) "Postliberals" are more critical of capitalism and consumerism and less critical of social democracy and the welfare state, as center-left economic policies could perhaps incentivize family formation. (2) "Postliberals" should take extremely aggressive positions on culture war issues and seek to create a kind of society where conservative cultural values are hegemonic and have state-backing, as opposed to the neutral public square approach of liberal pluralism. Sohrab Ahamri, for example, has pushed both of these arguments at various points in his career.
Number 1 I basically agree with, but this is hardly different from the "Rockefeller" Republicanism of old or even the position of liberal Catholic writers today (such as Michael Sean Winters at NCReporter or Liz Bruenig). Number 2 is clearly an unworkable stance given the significant shift in public opinion on culture war topics. If you couldn't ban abortion or nudity in movies in the 1980s when scores more people went to church and society was much more conservative, much less end liberal pluralism and enforce a quasi state religion, how to you plan to do that now? Things have shifted so far to the left that typical "conservative" culture warriors today include people in same sex unions (Dave Rubin), supporters of sexual libertinism and abortion (Dave Portnoy) and "trans-exclusive radical feminists" (JK Rowling). The once influential Religious Right is clearly working from a position of weakness. It can't even ban abortion in Ohio and Kentucky. The leading Republican is a vaguely religious thrice divorced New Yorker who supports a 16 week abortion ban (Germany, not exactly a hyper-religious theocracy, bans abortion after 12 weeks).
If anything, you should be extoling the virtues of liberal pluralism, because liberal pluralist concepts are precisely what conservative Christians will need to survive as religious minorities. If you lived in Erodgan's increasingly Islamist Turkey as a Christian, you would be crazy to advocate for a Christian theocracy. That would just lead to more persecution. You would be far better off to make arguments about pluralism and religious liberty and ally with secular and Muslim liberals. That might actually benefit your religious community.
To use a concrete example, many conservatives are worried that people who morally oppose homosexuality will face workplace discrimination in a future woke dystopia. You won't be able to keep a white collar professional job at a Fortune 500 company if HR finds out where you go to church and what your church believes. This is a major concern of Rod Dreher's. An obvious solution to this problem based on liberal principles would be to advocate for expanding Civil Rights law to include moral or political viewpoints as a "protected class", in addition to religion which is already protected. That way, if a white collar Christian gets fired or demoted for his views about homosexuality, he could file a claim with the EEOC or sue the company. Such an expansion of civil rights law could potentially have bipartisan support, because while conservative Christians will be protected, so to would many moral or political views, potentially. Communists and pro-LGBTers could file claims if fired by Christian management. Each side gets to benefit from the neutral public square at the cost of their ability to impose their will on the other.
Instead, the trend among right wing commentators is to attack Civil Rights law and pluralism (potentially their greatest ally) and argue instead that Christians should move to intentional communities (read: cult compounds) or somehow take over the US government and turn back the cultural changes of the last 50 years through government writ (read: insane fantasy).
This is an excellent apology for the need for society to grow beyond the liberal/conservative impasse and create something better. There is a growing perception in society that neither progressivism nor conservatism has the answers; the question is really just what ideology should take their place.