The post-liberal temptation keeps pulling in young intellectuals because it promises depth without demanding the actual burdens that come with throwing out liberalism. It offers a sense of rebellion, moral clarity, and civilizational purpose. The people who flirt with it range from Sohrab Ahmari and Patrick Deneen to the Claremont crowd around Ryan Williams to online writers like Gladden Pappin, Bronze Age Pervert, and the more serious Orthodox and Catholic Substackers. They dip into the critique but avoid the hard questions about what comes next.<\/p>\n
Part of the appeal is aesthetic. Post-liberalism looks weighty. It has the tone of a continental philosophy seminar mixed with the imagery of medieval Christendom or classical republican virtue. Ahmari writes with cultural anxiety that feels lofty. Deneen frames liberalism as a centuries-long civilizational exhaustion. Adrian Vermeule offers a legal theory that reads like a manifesto. Even someone like BAP dresses the argument in mythic masculinity. Young thinkers feel like they\u2019re connecting to something older and deeper than the procedural liberalism of John Rawls or the policy wonkery of David French. The vibe is \u201cwe\u2019re the ones who see the big picture.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second part is emotional. Liberalism feels thin to a lot of younger men and women who grew up in an atomized world: weak community, weak churches, weak families, unstable jobs, and no rituals. Post-liberalism promises thick identity. You see it in the trad-Catholic revival around Bishop Barron, the Orthodox wave visible in Jonathan Pageau\u2019s audience, or the Protestant postmillennial faction around Doug Wilson. It gives people the sense that liberal neutrality is a lie and that a more ordered world is possible. It provides meaning in a culture where meaning feels like a private hobby.<\/p>\n
The third part is political exhaustion. Liberal proceduralism and technocracy feel bloodless. Watching Mitt Romney or Pete Buttigieg speak feels like watching HR explain risk mitigation. Post-liberal writers offer a bracing critique: multicultural managerial liberalism has no soul. That critique resonates. People like Deneen, Ahmari, and Pappin identify real failures: collapsing social trust, elite consolidation, rising inequality, and the hollowing of civic life. Younger thinkers latch onto this because it gives them a language for their own dislocation.<\/p>\n
So why don\u2019t they commit. Why is post-liberalism a temptation rather than a destination.<\/p>\n
Because commitment requires giving up things they aren\u2019t ready to lose. Post-liberalism demands hierarchy, discipline, boundaries, and authority. Not as metaphors but as lived reality. If you take Vermeule\u2019s \u201ccommon-good constitutionalism\u201d seriously, you have to accept a far more directive state, with fewer exit options. If you take Deneen\u2019s \u201caristopopulism\u201d seriously, you must accept that elites must be reshaped, constrained, or replaced. If you take Doug Wilson\u2019s postmillennialism seriously, you\u2019re signing up for a social project that will shape not just politics but personal life. These things carry real costs.<\/p>\n
Most young intellectuals don\u2019t actually want hierarchy in their own lives. They want community without obligation. Ritual without authority. Belonging without constraint. They want the emotional thickness without the institutional thickness. They want the energy of medieval imagery with the freedom of modern autonomy. They want to critique liberalism\u2019s emptiness while still enjoying its personal liberties. Post-liberalism is thrilling as a stance and heavy as a system.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also the problem that post-liberal intellectuals have not produced a plausible blueprint. Ahmari says we need a pro-worker, pro-family state but doesn\u2019t describe the enforcement mechanism. Vermeule\u2019s theory raises more questions than it answers. Deneen calls for renewed civic virtue but doesn\u2019t map the transition from liberal pluralism to his preferred order. BAP offers mythic poetry rather than policy. The thinkers who sound the most confident\u2014Wilson\u2019s camp, for example\u2014have communities but not scalable models. The young intellectuals sense the gap. They want the diagnosis but not the cure.<\/p>\n
Finally, commitment requires responsibility. Building institutions. Submitting to authority. Raising families. Forming actual communities. Accepting tradeoffs. The temptation of post-liberalism is that you can talk like a counterrevolutionary without having to lead a counterrevolution. You can critique the hollowness of the present without risking anything to build the future.<\/p>\n
Post-liberalism keeps rising in influence because its critique is correct in many places: liberalism is tired, elites are brittle, and modern life is spiritually thin. But the movement remains a temptation because living outside liberalism requires enormous discipline. Young intellectuals flirt with the idea because it makes them feel part of a deeper tradition. They don\u2019t commit because the real costs\u2014authority, hierarchy, sacrifice\u2014are things they\u2019ve never been trained to accept.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easier to admire the cathedral from a distance than to move into it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The post-liberal temptation keeps pulling in young intellectuals because it promises depth without demanding the actual burdens that come with throwing out liberalism. It offers a sense of rebellion, moral clarity, and civilizational purpose. The people who flirt with it … Continue reading