Postliberals Don’t Understand What’s Wrong With America
Frustrated with the state of America, some on the Right have come to embrace postliberalism, an ideology that seeks to invigorate conservative politics by rejecting equality.
Under the Trump administration, an assortment of conservative and far-right organizations are currently in the process of mapping out the path to a reactionary future. Among these groups, the most intellectually sophisticated tradition is postliberalism. (Brett Carlsen / Getty Images)
The Right is often unsure what time it wants to live in. And I’m not just talking about how online conservatives wax nostalgic about 1990s memorabilia as though a classic Pizza Hut is their Proustian madeleine, a symbol of everything woke took from them.
In his 2009 essay “Progress and Memory: Making Whole Our Historical Sense,” self-described postliberal Patrick Deneen described progressives as myopically oriented to the future, liberals to the present, and reactionaries to the nostalgic past. Only conservatives were capable of restoring the “temporal continuity” between past, present, and future.
Flash-forward a few years later, and Deneen has replaced soothing metaphors of continuity and healing with calls for regime change, the title of his 2023 book, and assertions that what America needs is something “far more revolutionary” than even overthrowing the government. One is reminded of Corey Robin’s insightful observation in The Reactionary Mind that no matter how much conservatives speak of the past and the present, their politics is always oriented toward the future.
Sorry, but this article is available to active subscribers only. Please log in or become a subscriber.