In 2018, when I first began engaging in debates over what is today called “postliberalism,” more than a few of my fellow academics told me not to waste my time. In their view, it was an especially niche debate among a few mostly obscure and highly placed academic eccentrics.
But we should all care because postliberalism is now on the presidential ballot, and many of the same people I spoke to are scrambling to understand why and how. To do so we must understand what “postliberalism” means, who the major actors are in developing its ideas and influencing political elites, and the next steps for postliberals given that they now have one of their own on the 2024 Republican presidential ticket in Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
Put simply, postliberalism is three things. First, it is an authoritarian ideology adapted from Catholic reactionary movements responding to the French Revolution and, later, World War I. Second, it is a loose international coalition of illiberal, right-wing parties and political actors. Third, it is a set of policy proposals for creating a welfare state for family formation, the government establishment of the Christian religion, and the movement from republican government to administrative despotism.
The third point might sound unhinged, but postiberals have come to object to liberalism. While most Americans know the term “liberalism” as a reference to a left-of-center ideology common among Democrats, the other common use is in reference to a political theory that prioritizes individual rights as a source of political authority and human flourishing. Postliberals believe this “classical liberalism” to be a disembodied secularizing (even satanic) force that uses the language of liberty of conscience, representative government, and constitutionalism to conceal the true liberal aim of denying the authority of the highest good. In their view, liberalism has presently fallen apart, and there is now no need to “conserve” classical liberalism as movement conservatives like William F. Buckley Jr. to Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan had argued.
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