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Conservative vs. Postliberal: Is Liberalism Finished? | James Patterson & Jacob Imam

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In this episode of "Fault Lines," Jacob Imam and James Patterson debate whether post-liberalism offers a viable alternative to modern liberalism or whether its political and historical foundations have already proven unsuccessful.

Patterson argues that post-liberal political movements have repeatedly compromised religious freedom, individual rights, and the independence of the Church. Drawing on historical examples of Catholic authoritarian regimes, he warns that concentrating political power in the name of the common good risks repeating the failures of the past. Imam challenges that understanding of post-liberalism, arguing that its true foundation lies not in state power but in Christian tradition, virtue, and the cultivation of strong families and local communities. He contends that modern liberalism has weakened these natural institutions by expanding state sovereignty at their expense.

Their debate ranges from Catholic integralism, the French Revolution, and the American founding to religious liberty, the separation of church and state, local self-government, and the relationship between law and virtue. Along the way, they confront a deeper question: can a political order rooted in Christian tradition flourish within modern liberal institutions, or must society move beyond liberalism altogether?

The debate is moderated by Sarah Gustafson, assistant professor of politics at the Catholic University of America.

About the speakers:

Jacob Imam is the president of the College of St. Joseph the Worker and a scholar associated with the New Polity school of post-liberal thought. His work explores Catholic social teaching, political theology, economics, and the role of Christian communities in cultivating virtue and the common good.

James Patterson is an assistant professor of public affairs at the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee's Baker School and co-author of "Why Postliberalism Failed." His scholarship focuses on political theory, American political thought, religion, and the historical relationship between Christianity and political institutions.

Chapters:

0:00 Intro
1:01 The Debate: Has Post-Liberalism Failed?
1:40 James Patterson: The Failure of Post-Liberalism
4:16 Jacob Imam: The Case for Post-Liberalism
9:18 Are All Post-Liberals Integralists?
10:36 Can Christian Tradition Be Revived?
21:04 Why Liberals Struggle to Govern
25:27 How the Modern State Replaced Tradition
35:31 Has Liberalism Lost Its Legitimacy?
58:46 Can the State Make Us Virtuous?
1:20:20 Does America Have a Future?
1:27:22 Closing Statements

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TRANSKRIPTIO 🔗

WEBVTT
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Welcome to ISI's beautiful campus here in Wilmington, Delaware.
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My name is Sarah Gustavson.
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I'm an assistant professor of politics at the Catholic University of America, and I'm very happy to be here to moderate our debate today.
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The resolution is as follows: Postliberalism has failed.
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To debate this, I'm joined by Jacob Imam, president of the College of St.
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Joseph the Worker, and James Patterson, author of Why Postliberalism Failed, an assistant professor of public affairs at the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee's Baker School.
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Our speakers will begin with a few minutes of opening remarks and then we'll move into general conversation.
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So to start us off, James Patterson.
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All right.
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So post-liberalism has failed.
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That's the name of the book.
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It's the position that I'm taking here today.
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And uh the title seems to describe something relatively new.
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For people who are familiar with post-liberalism, they think of it as something that's emerged on the debates uh among Catholic conservatives, and uh as it emerged with like Patrick Denineen and Adrian Vermule against people like me and my co-author Thomas Howes.
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And um the truth is, as I explain in the book uh with Tom, that it's actually very old, the concepts of post-liberalism and the regimes that advocated for the model of government that are now being argued by people like Vermule and Danine, uh, they failed very badly.
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And um, so we try to go through uh the the arguments as well as the regimes to explain those failures.
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As far as the arguments go, the argument is that there needs to be an elite that is either sort of indirectly or entirely unelected, and that's directed by an executive, and that this executive is confessional and directs privileges and priorities towards Catholic ideas or Catholic institutions.
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Uh, and what we find is that the regimes that did this undermined the church and its independence, as well as committing pretty serious offenses against uh civil rights and liberties among their own citizens.
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And as for the and as for the institutions, uh the institutions of these regimes started to decompose because, in order for the the faction of Catholics that were advocating for these ideas to stay relevant, they had to make increasingly compromising decisions to remain in power, to the point where you know they're making collaborationist arrangements with Nazi uh agents.
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And so this kind of approach to post-liberalism historically has been one that has dramatically compromised uh Catholics and their ability to live out the faith.
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One thing that's important and that we don't do in the book is we don't defend liberalism.
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You're not gonna get that from me at this debate.
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Uh Tom Howes, had he been here, would have done that, but I'm not a liberal.
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So uh, you know, uh I might say things that sound liberal to Jacob, but in my view, they're Republican, which is uh different, I promise.
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Well, I appreciate that so much.
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What I'm going to do is very far from defend the scholars that you name in your book.
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I'm not going to defend Bermule.
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I'm not going to defend Danin.
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In fact, in my work and the work of the new polity school of post-liberalism, has only done the opposite of critiquing them and saying that they are still, in fact, utilizing liberal forms and merely advocating for different policies within them.
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Postliberalism is very different from integralism, not insofar as I would say that they're excluded from the larger umbrella, but you cannot say that they're equivocal terms.
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That rather, post-liberalism is first and foremost a theological term.
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And in fact, that's where it first emerged within a theological context, most famously the Yale School, where scholars were figuring out that there was this great loss in scholarship, principally in biblical studies, when they were turning to the last century.
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They're saying that we have gotten rid of sacred tradition and understanding the context in which revelation was actually given and in which it was also received.
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That to that tradition, that social tradition, gave not just the words that were used, but the very concepts that were then adopted and then implemented.
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In the pre-liberal world, those who studied sacred scripture understood themselves to be in that same narrative that they were reading from.
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And that narrative was something that was collective in the sense that you could only understand it within the body that you were in, namely the Church of Jesus Christ.
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When this idea re-emerged in the last segment of the 20th century, it was done within a theological context to say that we have improperly done our own theological studies.
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And if it is in fact the case that we have failed to understand revelation as truly within a social context, then that means that we have to go back to that context to properly understand what it is that we've received.
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Now, you can immediately understand why some of these scholars, and in fact some of the same scholars, moved from biblical theology to political theology with the same concept.
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It's not just what are these propositions that we are to believe, but what is the world that we actually inhabit and want to inhabit?
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What is the world that we are cultivating?
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What is the world that we want to live in?
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And that there are ultimately two different worlds to seal the language of St.
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Augustine, it's either the city of God or it is the city of man.
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So then the political theological world of post-liberalism emerged.
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Is what of those two cities are we cultivating?
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If in the liberal world, in contrast, and I understand you're not defending, we see that there is an understanding fundamentally that is a political ideology that sees the isolated, rational individual as the unit of society.
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In the post-liberal world, we find, in contrast, a conviction that man is fundamentally social and that out of the desires of the society that he is in, he builds particular types of institutions so as to fulfill the desires that they share.
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So this maps perfectly onto the three modes of love that St.
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Thomas Aquinas gives us.
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The three modes being, of course, sorrow when your love is unfulfilled and will not be met, the the form of desire where your form is, where the mode of love is yet to be met, but there's hope still to be had, and then there's actual enjoyment, the last mode of love, where you have united with that which you have desired.
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And the political world, as the post-liberal has understood it, is in that realm of desire, of having a hope for achieving some good that we all share and building up institutions accordingly so as to be able to achieve it.
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That's what I'm going to defend is still well alive, even if the desires are not always good.
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I would say that uh in this respect, post-liberalism that you're describing is the one that we say we are not going to go after in the book.
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Um uh the uh the term itself has been sort of expanded uh beyond uh what we knew it to mean when we were getting started on this project originally.
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And there was the, you know, um, there was the sort of Josiah school and the new polity school.
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And you're, you know, Jacob Imam of the New Polity School.
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I mean, everyone knows.
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If you're in this debate, you know Jacob is, right?
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Uh uh and so we were taking on the Josiah's approach, and you know, I've uh and so I I was intentionally not trying to take on your view.
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And uh the uh the one way I would often describe the new polity approach is what I call the antiquarian approach, right?
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Uh the troubles that I had with uh the new polity approach had always been the that the attempt to reach back uncritically examines um uh institutions and hopes to reproduce them here without concern for how things had changed.
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So what I was saying about post-liberalism in my opening remarks is more targeted at people who are not here.
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Uh whereas the new polity issue is um uh is more uh uh I would say an issue of emphasis between where Tom and me stand and where um where you do.
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Well, you know, let's take two, both of those points you make.
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One on the on the objections to the integralists as well as to us as labeled as antiquarian.
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I think that there's a very um a very uh misguided understanding of what resource ma means, if that is how it's being labeled as antiquarian.
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So far from going in the past, past reaching back and saying, let's recreate that now in the 21st century.
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The movement of the resource ma is an extraction of principles that animated and vivified societies, Christian ones of the past.
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So principles are not policies, they're very different things.
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They, in the terms of principles, you are looking at perennial truths that must, by man's prudence, be reapplied, manifested, and incarnated in the time that he is in.
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That is a very different project than trying to reach back and reproduce, say, the guild system or the feudal system.
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It's rather to say, why were they at that time building the systems that they were?
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What were the ideas that captured their mind?
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How can we bring those ideas back to the present and begin to build new institutions that are truly creative, that are new, that have never been seen before, that except for perhaps the divine ideas, and if and of course they would be there, so that we are truly participants in the eternal work of God and truly saints of this time now, and not just aping a previous period.
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I would say that is a really important distinction for us to have, and principally because within the criticisms that you and I both would level against the integralists, is that we have to take it not on the scene of how has what has been the fruit of the previous generation who have held these integralist ideas, but rather how do we judge them based in terms of their principles?
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Are they Christian or are they not?
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Because of course, we could go through and we could look at quite a number of things that and judge it by its fruit.
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Take liberalism, for instance.
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You have the French terror, you have two world wars, you have the atomic bomb, you have consumer nihilism, right?
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I mean, these are not things worth defending.
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But uh what you can also do is go through and say, well, there are good things, right?
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But but within the good things, we are then left with a question.
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Are these good things emerging because the political system is so good?
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Or is it because nature is so fertile and so fecund that the good is just going to penetrate through whatever there is?
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And that's why we need to analyze these things not in terms of policies and not in terms of their projects, but rather in terms of their principles.
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And that's where I would critique them rather than looking back at the past, as you did.
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Oh, the um the thing about resource mal is that if you're going to make it, you need to know what to recover and what not to recover.
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And uh that means that while you are engaging in resource small for principles, you need to already possess principles for resource small.
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Uh, and what we're trying to do by reviewing historical post-liberals is is see what are the ideas that didn't work out so well, right?
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So the idea that you bring is the idea of the common good, right, as like a as the the end to which you order a regime.
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Uh and what was the common good as stipulated?
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Um not necessarily the common good, but but continue on.
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Um and uh when you uh when you examine these regimes, like you know, Dolphus shelling people with artillery in Austria or Franco kidnapping collaborators with the Republic, you're like, I don't know if I like these, right?
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Like uh and these are often held up as kind of examples, uh uh that uh these regimes are held up as examples as like a different kind of Catholic politics that take seriously nationalism, uh, and you know, the end result is you know widespread violence uh against people who are rights-bearing individuals by the nature they've given it been given by God.
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So it doesn't really seem like that's a very uh a decent way to approach.
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And the reason why the policy approach is the one that I take is it's not only my job, but uh it's it's also it's also that um part of the problem with a principles-only approach or principles first approach, uh, is that these principles, when applied, have to be applied by institutions that have their own rules that the principles can't help you discern.
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Uh so for example, if you want to have uh a state-based uh uh Catholic church that is a recipient of state taxes, right?
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Uh now what we're doing is we're engaging in the seizure of property by a coercive state from people who do not necessarily confess the Catholic faith.
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Is this something that we find okay?
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Uh and if so, how much can we take from them for them to uh uh that's a question that Americans don't think about when they think about post-liberalism, because they're they're, as you might imagine, they're liberal, right?
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And so when they think about making that change, they don't think about how you're going to reverse something very serious that uh was originally a solved problem with the separation of church and state.
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Baptists used to have to pay for an Anglican church and a Baptist church, and the separation made that no longer the case.
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Um, and that's why the principles, uh uh, when applied always entail something more than what the principles themselves contain.
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I agree with this completely.
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Of course, we derive our principles from the very person of Jesus Christ as Catholics.
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That is what we do.
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That is something that is incarnate, that's real, that you can touch, you can feel someone, in fact.
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And so no doubt that's true.
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But that also means that you're engaged in a post-liberal project.
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Because if principles do emerge from the modus vivendi of a people, then that is exactly the claim of post-liberalism.
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That that is something that we don't find just with an individual speculating on his own in the state of nature, but rather is cultivated, that is found, that is discovered within the context of a community that engages in life together.
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So I would say that in fact, this project, your critique of integralism is in fact done with a methodology that a post-liberal would would smile at on some some occasions.
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But let me let me ask, let me, let me turn this this around one more time.
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Is that of course, while you're not sitting here defending liberalism, it should be we should have a conversation, I think, about saying what what liberalism is, is it still living?
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Is it active in in the Western civilizations that we inhabit today, in America in particular?
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And and of course, does um w do those absolutist regimes what do they have in common with liberalism?
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Because this has been a principal point of critique that um you know greats like Andrew Willer Jones and DC Schindler uh and Mike Hanby have have leveled against the integralists and more is is that when we look at the history of uh the absolutist regimes that you rightfully critique, and I agree with you, is that they did not emerge but uh as coincidentally in parallel with liberalism.
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And both the absolutist regimes and the liberal regimes came onto the historical venue at the same time, and it makes sense why they did, is that both are projects of building up state sovereignty, which is the modern political move that begins to critique and to collapse what came before it.
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And so I I wanted to hear your thoughts on on this in particular, because if we if you're going through and and critiquing the absolutist regimes, you are in in very same fact also critiquing the liberal ones as well.
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Yeah, so the um the reason why I like to stress the distinction between republicanism and liberalism is for precisely this question.
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I won't tell Tom.
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What's that?
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I won't tell Tom.
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Tom.
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Tom will not watch this.
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I will make sure of it.
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Have his IP block.
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Uh uh the uh and American Catholics um have always preferred the language of republicanism because republicanism entails a language of duty as well as liberty, right?
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So for every liberty a person exercises under under God's gift of that liberty, it's ordered to an end, and that end is what we call uh serving that end is what we call duty, right?
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And this is everything from Cicero to Aquinas and you know uh the attempt to absorb that kind of republican tradition within the church, like people like Bellarmine.
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Uh liberalism instead is, as you say, a totalizing project, and it's one in which the state emerges as a kind of liberator, and what it liberates you from is the throne and altar.
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Now, the reason why um French revolutionaries might have uh a case to make was that the throne and altar were actually not doing too great, right?
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Uh there had been expensive wars uh operating through taxation that you know maybe the the French could not bear any longer and uh for purposes that didn't really seem to serve the French people.
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Uh and the church, as it was, you know, operating in France was primarily kind of like a uh a cross between a proper church, like the way the Catholic Church is supposed to operate, but also one primarily controlled by the crown and at the highest level staffed by second or third sons who didn't even know Latin, right?
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They they were largely just Are you even a Catholic today?
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It's one thing you're not allowed to know Latinism.
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Okay, that's too far.
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Uh but you know it's just one full tread on us.
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You know, uh you know, uh I don't know.
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I worked in Ave Maria for 10 years.
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You know, so um so that kind of liberalism, the one that's seen as emancipatory, was meant to emancipate you from uh real problems, uh although often exaggerated ones, and it would emancipate you right into worse problems.
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Um and those would be um like the civil constitution of the clergy, right?
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Where the where the Catholic Church is essentially turned into a department of the French Republic.
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Uh and what the French thought of themselves, the revolutionary saw themselves as doing was completing the logic of Gallicanism, right?
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Well, if the king can appoint bishop, certainly the people can, right?
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It's it is is it going to be the third estate that does it or not?
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And the answer was, well, look at France now, right?
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They never really resolved the question.
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They just eventually sort of gave up answering it.
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Um and so that kind of liberalism is not what I would want to defend.
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I would say, however, when it comes to the historical examples of the authoritarian regimes, it is right to say, as you as you mentioned earlier, is that a lot of these authoritarian regimes also had totalizing ambitions the way that liberals did.
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Uh, and that they become imitations of one another.
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An early sort of like contributor to this debate was a man named Timothy Troutner who made this argument about liberalism and integralism being sort of like mirror images of one another in this totalizing uh uh project.
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Uh and the reason for this is that liberalism entails a liberty without duty, right?
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Instead, it is a gift granted by the state and that can be taken away from the state on the basis of how that liberty operates.
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Uh and um without a good that defines what that end is for liberty, you can end up with a lot of policies that do tremendous harm.
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And then uh because the state was the one responsible for fighting that liberty, it's also to blame for it.
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And so you end up with this like churn in all of these states where parliaments attempt to achieve ends.
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They don't know what ends to achieve because they don't know what the good is.
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Uh, and if it's so they go with whatever's the most emancipatory, and then it ends up ruinous.
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Uh and uh after they've used an example?
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Oh, sure.
00:21:28.559 --> 00:21:37.599
Yeah, the um this the um the Spanish uh have a have a revolt against a repeated series of weak crowns.
00:21:37.680 --> 00:21:42.319
Uh the last one is actually uh King Amadeo, who's Italian, right?
00:21:42.400 --> 00:21:43.200
He's like brought in.
00:21:43.279 --> 00:21:45.759
They like bring out uh a guy who's not even Spanish.
00:21:45.839 --> 00:21:47.519
It's like maybe we're the problem, right?
00:21:47.680 --> 00:21:50.000
And uh and so he just leaves.
00:21:50.240 --> 00:21:56.160
Uh his response to to the Spanish uh uh situation was so bad that he just departs.
00:21:56.319 --> 00:21:58.160
Uh and so they just declare a republic.
00:21:58.319 --> 00:21:59.839
The the French liberals just declare a republic.
00:22:01.119 --> 00:22:04.079
And within a few years you have a dictatorship on your hands.
00:22:04.240 --> 00:22:09.519
And a big reason for this is because liberals don't also know how to govern.
00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:12.319
They know how to think about governing.
00:22:12.400 --> 00:22:16.799
They are good at ideology, but they are very bad at institution building.
00:22:17.359 --> 00:22:25.599
And the bottom that you will reach whenever liberals run out of bad ideas to try is military dictatorships.
00:22:26.400 --> 00:22:30.319
Yeah, and they all seem to have the same fetish with concentration camps and mustaches.
00:22:30.960 --> 00:22:45.920
But on the side of the on the on the side of the absolutist rise, I think that it's it's important to identify, of course you're you're right, that there was a an attempt to destroy customs, but what those customs were are just so crucial.
00:22:46.160 --> 00:22:53.680
So you go back to the Middle Ages, right, and you find there that the king acts more as judge than he does as legislature.
00:22:53.920 --> 00:23:01.920
He is his task when there are problems that arise within his kingdom, is to go and investigate what is what happened.
00:23:02.000 --> 00:23:08.960
And of course, that is the the beginnings of inquisitions, rightly understood, right, and rightly executed too, right?
00:23:09.119 --> 00:23:12.799
Of going through and finding where has the perpetrator been.
00:23:12.960 --> 00:23:27.119
So an example that I really love that that uh Professor Jones offers is that um there was once a lord who brought his his peasants before the king because they stole firewood from his forest.
00:23:27.279 --> 00:23:29.200
And they said, Well, this is this is absurd.
00:23:29.279 --> 00:23:31.039
We always take firewood from your forest.
00:23:31.200 --> 00:23:39.839
And he says, Well, no, you have taken two cartloads of firewood from my forest, when in fact each year before you would only take one.
00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.799
And so then it was be it was the duty of the king to go and investigate what have they done?
00:23:44.880 --> 00:23:53.680
And so they went back decades and and talked to everyone in the community, trying to discover did they sometimes take one or two carts?
00:23:53.920 --> 00:24:05.119
And having discovered eventually that it was two cartloads of wood that they would take some years, that they were not the ones that disturb the peace.
00:24:05.680 --> 00:24:10.319
They were not the ones that uh upended custom.
00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:14.400
And the that was the Lord who did that.
00:24:14.960 --> 00:24:25.759
And it was the king's job then to keep the Lord at bay from harming the peasants, because it was him that uh uh uh began to capsize custom.
00:24:26.160 --> 00:24:35.920
So you see there, of course, there was a law that came on the book telling saying that they were allowed to, but after a couple of years, when that law didn't need to be enforced, they would literally go and erase them from the books.
00:24:36.240 --> 00:24:37.440
Okay, well, what do you have there?
00:24:37.599 --> 00:24:52.640
You clearly have a case as king as judge, that he is not defining the pattern and order of life for the community, but rather he is the one that is defending the freedom as people have chosen to freely live, right?
00:24:52.720 --> 00:24:54.000
That's true liberty.
00:24:54.400 --> 00:25:17.440
What you find in the rise of the modern political project is both those who are in the profane world, now the invention of the secular, as well as those who want to retain the religious um uh trappings of their political regime, uh start to become legislatures defining the pattern and order of one's life.
00:25:17.680 --> 00:25:27.519
And when you have when you introduce this new system, then of course you're going to start to create different political institutions.
00:25:28.079 --> 00:25:34.079
The actual government structure, the regime form, is going to be different.
00:25:34.319 --> 00:25:36.640
Again, going back to the argument of St.
00:25:36.799 --> 00:25:37.519
Augustine and St.
00:25:37.599 --> 00:25:43.119
Thomas Aquinas, that what you love, thus shall you build, right?
00:25:43.599 --> 00:25:48.720
What you desire, you will have a hope and thus a plan of how to achieve it.
00:25:49.039 --> 00:25:53.200
What changed in the modern political period were the desires, right?
00:25:53.359 --> 00:25:55.759
What was hoped to be achieved.
00:25:56.000 --> 00:26:02.160
And this is where I see that liberalism and the absolutist regimes are in lockstep together.
00:26:02.400 --> 00:26:09.680
And as the these two different forms of the modern project emerge, what are they doing exactly?
00:26:09.839 --> 00:26:11.680
They are defining rights, right?
00:26:11.839 --> 00:26:13.279
That is a liberal project, right?
00:26:13.440 --> 00:26:25.359
They're trying to give individual rights, but that means that they have now the work of defining it, of uh of uh of in of actually instantiating it and also of uh defending it.
00:26:25.680 --> 00:26:43.359
So while it may seem from the liberal point of view that the individual is being championed, it's only at the expense of the growth and the rise of state sovereignty, insofar as now they are penetrating in for the protection of the individual.
00:26:43.599 --> 00:27:09.519
And it's precisely this critique that I find so compelling, namely that as we like to claim that there is a neutral state that is going in and defending, he is actually sending in tendrils of control that are designed to be able to separate man from his most intimate uh connections from his family, from his church, from his community, from the Klan.
00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:16.160
And and those are really where the main uh uh political uh powers lie.
00:27:16.480 --> 00:27:24.160
And this is what separates the conservative from the liberal, is that the conservative wants everything down at the local level.
00:27:24.319 --> 00:27:32.720
He actually wants more politics, not less, but he wants it more at a close-knit level.
00:27:32.880 --> 00:27:33.920
And why does he want that?
00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:42.000
Because that's where you have a chance not just of controlling a people, but seeing them grow into being a certain type of people.
00:27:42.240 --> 00:28:06.559
It's not just that they you can predict their activity, but rather that they have a chance of becoming virtuous, that they become dedicated to their families, that they become dedicated to their people, that they have duties and responsibilities that are then defined not because they have to do it by a threat of the government telling them they have to do it, but rather because they desire it for its own sake.
00:28:06.720 --> 00:28:22.640
And I find that this is what is just so insidious about the integralist position is that they try and retain the state sovereignty form of liberalism with claiming that they have a different end to politics.
00:28:22.799 --> 00:28:30.559
And if I was to throw out any objection to to your to your book, I would say, I wish you had given us that different end a little bit more.
00:28:31.519 --> 00:28:35.359
Oh, there's only so much you can put in the book that's already a year late.
00:28:37.519 --> 00:28:42.960
Yeah, so that I would I would respond by saying that there's uh you say that that that the desires changed.
00:28:43.039 --> 00:28:46.240
And that's true, but those desires are changing because other things are changing, right?
00:28:46.319 --> 00:28:50.000
You have technological changes uh and you have political changes.
00:28:50.319 --> 00:28:51.119
Well tell us about some of those.
00:28:51.359 --> 00:28:51.759
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:28:51.839 --> 00:28:58.880
So the technological changes, things like the printing press people are you know aware of, um, but also uh uh technologies and and policies.
00:28:58.960 --> 00:29:01.279
So modern economies begin to emerge.
00:29:01.359 --> 00:29:12.799
Uh, this is actually one of the great breaks between the sort of the French right and the French left before the revolution is over, the extent to which you would want to import like the Scottish Enlightenment's approach, right?
00:29:12.960 --> 00:29:16.480
Which separates money value from like ends, right?
00:29:16.559 --> 00:29:16.960
It's good.
00:29:17.359 --> 00:29:34.480
Uh and um uh then you also have uh institutional changes where as uh standards of living improve uh and um uh decision making becomes increasingly concentrated in and and nations that are forming.
00:29:34.720 --> 00:29:42.960
England is you know taking uh uh Scotland and it's got Wales and parts of you know, France is now consolidating power under the the 10 Louis.
00:29:43.599 --> 00:29:49.519
Um and uh the the hope would be that they could uh that they could concentrate that power.
00:29:49.599 --> 00:29:55.839
So people are responding, they want new institutions that will uh that will safeguard them from these changes.
00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:09.759
Uh and so, in a way, the reason why uh the things you're describing cease to operate uh the way that they're supposed to, it's not just because the people want the uh different things, but rather the the the institutions they used to acquire to secure them vanish.
00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:18.480
There's like the great response that Tocqueville has to Edmund Burke in um uh it's uh uh uh the Ancien Regime.
00:30:18.559 --> 00:30:25.839
Uh he says, uh, I I really wish that we'd had all these institutions you talked about, but we didn't, and they were gone, you know.
00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:36.799
So the the local nobility could no longer do the things that you were describing because the French state had concentrated them all at Versailles, and the French Revolution was really just a change in management.
00:30:37.039 --> 00:30:54.799
Um and uh it's funny that we keep talking about uh France because, of course, this is like the centerpiece of this fight over integralism and and and liberalism, uh, since uh the reactionary, the French reactionaries, as you know, we've repeated it here a few times, had the same totalizing project.
00:30:54.960 --> 00:30:59.519
We'll do it for throne and altar rather than for liberté, égalte, and fraternite.
00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:08.079
Um, so that's that's one of the things about those institutions that matters is that uh traditions, customs, they don't scale, right?
00:31:08.319 --> 00:31:11.359
That's part of what makes them the way they are, local, right?
00:31:11.440 --> 00:31:15.200
You can't scale local, then it's national or it's it's statewide.
00:31:15.359 --> 00:31:28.160
Uh and so you either abandon them the way that like the French did, or were really coerced to, uh, or you preserve them by creating alternative institutions that uh create those contexts for self-government.
00:31:28.240 --> 00:31:42.240
And that's what the American founding did, uh, is that it uh it understood the federal government to have derived powers from the states and the people, uh, and that the states themselves had derived powers from the people within their government.
00:31:42.400 --> 00:31:48.640
Uh, and unless you enumerated the authority for those states or federal government to operate, then the people retained them.
00:31:48.880 --> 00:31:51.039
And that was the Republican founding.
00:31:51.200 --> 00:31:56.960
And what's happened, especially in the 20th century, has there's been this layering of liberalism over it.
00:31:57.119 --> 00:32:03.200
Uh, and you will hear it whenever someone says something like, uh, the First Amendment gives me the right to the freedom of speech.
00:32:03.359 --> 00:32:06.640
It's like, no, you always had the right to freedom of speech.
00:32:06.799 --> 00:32:13.519
The First Amendment is there to empower the government to protect that right because God gave you that right.
00:32:14.000 --> 00:32:30.079
Uh, and the loss of that divine givenness to those rights, uh, and instead understanding them to be something the state provided is the way that kind of liberal layer over the top of republicanism has obscured uh the way that these institutions are supposed to operate.
00:32:30.160 --> 00:32:31.680
Now, did it do so permanently?
00:32:31.839 --> 00:32:32.720
Is this reversible?
00:32:32.880 --> 00:32:35.759
That's the American conservative question since the 50s.
00:32:35.920 --> 00:32:38.559
Uh, in some cases, the answer's been no, right?
00:32:38.640 --> 00:32:45.680
That like uh the American project was a half step towards this and it's finishing that step now, and we're kind of stuck.
00:32:45.920 --> 00:32:51.599
Um, or uh it is reversible because the Americans don't want to put up with this for much longer.
00:32:51.759 --> 00:32:55.200
And I th I still think the answer is uh to be continued.
00:32:55.519 --> 00:33:08.960
Yeah, well, I think the distinction that you just made, there are both liberal conceptions of the of the First Amendment, though, like both in the sense of uh the state gave it to me, but also the state is there to give it to me or not, right?
00:33:09.119 --> 00:33:27.920
If the state is there to protect my my right, well, that's also the state defining that it is a right, that they are then also instantiating it in a particular legal way, and they then also have to defend it as they will and only when they will, right?
00:33:28.160 --> 00:33:33.440
And of course, this is this is, I mean, everybody sees this now, is that you can't actually say whatever you want.
00:33:33.680 --> 00:33:37.440
I mean, people are going to jail for saying saying things about black people, right?
00:33:37.680 --> 00:33:44.400
And that is that is something that is revealing to the rest of the world just how false the liberal claims are.
00:33:44.559 --> 00:33:53.039
That you don't say something negative about a black person because you have they have a right to be defended in in a certain way, but because they're your brother.
00:33:53.359 --> 00:33:58.960
Because they are somebody that you actually owe love, charity, kindness to.
00:33:59.359 --> 00:34:10.880
And and you don't respect them because they just have a right, but because there's actually something deeper, thicker, better that defines that, rather than the state telling you or defining that that that world.
00:34:11.039 --> 00:34:29.519
And I and this is this is something I I genuinely want to hear your your your take on this, is that I think the breakdown of the liberal uh uh veil that we have seen, and I agree with you after particularly after in a post-war world, is is it's breaking down today in in some horrific uh ways.
00:34:30.079 --> 00:34:33.920
And I think it's because the state has overplayed its card.
00:34:34.159 --> 00:34:41.760
You know, we saw if we can just take just in the last 20, 20 years or so, uh endless uh wars, never-ending wars.
00:34:41.920 --> 00:34:48.079
We saw the 2008 crisis and then this like absurd uh bailout of the banks.
00:34:48.239 --> 00:34:55.679
Uh we saw that as we saw a real stagnation and even a decline in the standard of living.
00:34:55.920 --> 00:35:02.719
We saw, in fact, that the average lifespan going down, shocking, right?
00:35:03.039 --> 00:35:16.000
We saw um most like the most confusing thing in the world, which was the rise of the woke um movement and with the crowning jewel of transgenderism.
00:35:16.159 --> 00:35:24.480
And then, of course, what what sealed the deal was uh the COVID lockdowns and the mandate for a rushed vaccine.
00:35:24.559 --> 00:35:32.800
I mean, these things are all just the cause the proving to the world that the state is not a neutral force.
00:35:33.360 --> 00:36:00.320
And I think what we're finding here is that with the rise of of the extreme wokeism on the left and and truly this this rise of the neo-right, this alt-right um on the other side of the aisle is not because, you know, these integralists came along and started the same some some radical things, but because the state revealed itself not to be a neutral actor.
00:36:00.480 --> 00:36:13.280
And now everybody is in chaos, trying to grab as much power as they can because they understand that there is not a kind public square anymore.
00:36:13.440 --> 00:36:16.159
The lies of liberalism have been identified.
00:36:16.320 --> 00:36:31.519
And I think this this horrific breakdown in our own civilization is being identified by people today precisely because the m we have been disabused of this myth of a kind state.
00:36:31.760 --> 00:36:37.599
It's not neutral, it is powerful, and people want that power and want to wield it.
00:36:37.760 --> 00:36:45.840
And that is, I think, the most devastating result that we could know from the breakdown of the modern political project of the creation of sovereignty.
00:36:46.159 --> 00:36:46.480
Yeah.
00:36:47.360 --> 00:36:53.920
I would respond to the early part about um the distinction without difference um on the First Amendment.
00:36:54.000 --> 00:36:58.800
Uh First Amendment's uh the way it operates, it says Congress shall make no law abridging.
00:36:58.880 --> 00:37:06.000
Uh and since Congress had the sole legislative authority by denying it that power, it's not really operating as a state.
00:37:06.159 --> 00:37:12.320
Uh this is important because states, you know, in the United States uh uh in the United States don't exist that way.
00:37:12.400 --> 00:37:20.960
Uh, I mean I mean to say that it ha that it's a government body that claims sovereignty, that it claims the right to give it a right and take it away.
00:37:21.039 --> 00:37:35.920
Aaron Powell So that's important because um to define when it is exercising and when it's not because in the Because make a distinction here with me on this is that how is that different from say a let's take an integralist example, one that neither of us would like very much, right?
00:37:36.079 --> 00:37:49.360
But let's take a Catholic regime giving tolerance then for someone of a different faith speaking up, that you're tolerant only to a particular level, and then you say, okay, that's enough, you gotta settle down there, right?
00:37:49.679 --> 00:37:57.920
Because that happens in the liberal formation of state sovereignty as well, particularly with the First Amendment.
00:37:58.079 --> 00:37:59.199
So could you define that difference?
00:37:59.760 --> 00:37:59.920
Yeah.
00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:04.480
It's not the state that's sovereign in the First Amendment, it's the people.
00:38:04.639 --> 00:38:07.119
The people are the ones who consent to form the Constitution.
00:38:07.199 --> 00:38:11.280
The state then operates in service to those people, but only on the terms set by the people.
00:38:11.440 --> 00:38:26.960
Uh, and the way that it does so is very careful by denying Congress legislative authority, which is the only authority that's supposed to have sort of legisl uh legal author uh power outside those powers delegated to the executive, like commander-in-chief power, adjudicating power of the courts.
00:38:27.119 --> 00:38:31.199
Uh and so sovereignty remains the people of the United States in that sense.
00:38:31.360 --> 00:38:35.920
Uh it's when um I'm certainly not objecting to the American Project, by the way.
00:38:36.159 --> 00:38:36.320
Yeah.
00:38:36.400 --> 00:38:43.440
I I you know this this this but but but this is this is something that really needs to be defined precisely because of what we said earlier.
00:38:43.599 --> 00:38:53.760
That the that the more that there it are the people rising up with their own individual rights, that is simultaneous with the growth of state power.
00:38:54.079 --> 00:38:54.239
Right.
00:38:54.400 --> 00:38:56.320
So that's the distinction that we need to make.
00:38:56.639 --> 00:39:04.800
But um, you know, the you'll note that in this you know, 250 with the Declaration of Independence, it is our right, it is our duty, right?
00:39:04.960 --> 00:39:06.639
That's what's in the declaration.
00:39:06.719 --> 00:39:21.440
Uh and it's our duty precisely because of something that you uh that you mentioned in in your comments, which is that we have future children that are going to inherit the projects that we've undertaken here.
00:39:21.599 --> 00:39:27.840
This is, you know, in the in the preamble of the constitution, that it's not just us, but it's also future generations.
00:39:28.559 --> 00:39:39.039
And um, so when we talk about forever wars, right, in Afghanistan and Iraq, a lot of kids that are like coming out of high school or in college or just out of college will talk about them.
00:39:39.199 --> 00:39:50.320
Um, and those were not imposed by the state, those were passed as wars by Congress by overwhelming majorities that people thought were a good idea and then led by presidents.
00:39:50.400 --> 00:39:52.880
So these were actually freely chosen projects.
00:39:53.039 --> 00:40:01.599
Uh and uh there is a kind of abstraction from uh that experience if it's one that you didn't live through, right?
00:40:01.760 --> 00:40:08.960
Where it feels like something imposed on you, something that you had no control over, uh, when that's true.
00:40:09.119 --> 00:40:17.519
And that's something that should have been taken in uh uh by the ideas of the people when they were passing this legislation or when they were ratifying a a state of war.
00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:24.800
Another side of this, though, that of course my my real question I'm posing to you is is why is this next generation?
00:40:25.119 --> 00:40:36.000
Why I would say not just Gen Z, but even most millennials at this point, like profoundly post-liberal, um, not in the integralist sense, but in the way that I defined at the beginning.
00:40:36.400 --> 00:40:42.320
It's because the state has not proven to us that they were our own decisions.
00:40:42.559 --> 00:40:54.960
And in COVID, it was just demonstrably the case that these people were not trustworthy and that they were compromised and that they were liars as well.
00:40:55.199 --> 00:41:08.320
And that is the thing that we need to be able to face together, particularly within our role in the academy, so that we might be able to have a calm and civil discourse.
00:41:08.480 --> 00:41:19.440
But we can't push away the facts, or else that's only going to incite the next generation to rebel even further against what we are offering them.
00:41:19.519 --> 00:41:24.400
And this is Plato's point, of course, is that every generation is rebelling against his father, right?
00:41:24.480 --> 00:41:26.079
It's like, and why is he doing it?
00:41:26.159 --> 00:41:27.599
Because he's denying the facts.
00:41:27.840 --> 00:41:29.039
We have to be calm.
00:41:29.199 --> 00:41:39.519
We have to be, we have to be clear-minded about what is actually happening so that we might be able to deliver a more virtuous political landscape to the next generation.
00:41:39.840 --> 00:41:50.400
Yeah, and the uh the trouble with the legitimacy of the regime and the so-called neutrality is one area where I've never really understood the problem.
00:41:50.559 --> 00:41:54.960
And the reason for that is I've never imagined American politics to have liberal neutrality.
00:41:55.119 --> 00:41:58.719
This is a blind spot we were talking about during a lunch before we were recording this.
00:41:59.119 --> 00:42:00.960
But you mean in actual fact or in the world?
00:42:01.280 --> 00:42:03.599
In actual fact, or even like a moral commitment.
00:42:03.760 --> 00:42:11.039
Um I, you know, I was a student uh of Ross Lance and Donald Lutz, and these people did not teach a liberal founding.
00:42:11.440 --> 00:42:18.320
And so and I and uh, you know, I grew up uh religious Catholic, and and so the idea that this existed has always seemed very strange to me.
00:42:18.400 --> 00:42:25.119
And I wrote for National Affairs a few years ago about um woke politics as a kind of civil religion.
00:42:25.360 --> 00:42:36.800
It kind of fits in more easily with identity-based partitioning of employment, trust on experts, and a kind of white-collar patronage that occurs in both the private and the public sector.
00:42:36.960 --> 00:42:48.400
I think uh Chris Rufo today published a story about being certified gay to receive LGBT um uh grants for tattoos what qualifies.
00:42:48.960 --> 00:42:54.159
It's actually like a pretty, pretty uh aggressive amount of paperwork that you have to undertake.
00:42:54.239 --> 00:42:57.119
It's a pretty incredible uh uh discovery he's made.
00:42:57.280 --> 00:43:00.639
Um the rise of the individual, the rise of the state, yet again.
00:43:01.039 --> 00:43:10.400
But it it it's it's an interesting issue here where like this is clearly not a um uh a neutral state, but it's also a patronage granting state.
00:43:10.480 --> 00:43:22.239
And in the United States, we had patronage that was like transparently patronage, and now we have it as like behind PhDs and grant writing processes, which means it's just harder to get the money than it used to be.
00:43:22.400 --> 00:43:30.239
You know, it used to be that if you're award healer in Brooklyn, you know, you could get like, you know, maybe a postmaster generalship if you got enough votes out.
00:43:30.400 --> 00:43:35.440
But now you gotta like, you know, hire a lawyer and spend you know six weeks writing a grant.
00:43:35.599 --> 00:43:38.320
Um, but the patronage network is still there.
00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:47.440
And um, in a way, like the liberal neutrality is more of a story that professionals tell themselves when they're writing those grants, right?
00:43:47.519 --> 00:43:53.840
Like uh clearly I deserve this money because I have expertise and what they're funding is some kind of operation here.
00:43:54.000 --> 00:44:09.280
Whereas in the past, this kind of um this kind of um uh lack of neutrality was Apparent because people were participating in government more, uh, not directly in like decision making, but in candidate selection.
00:44:09.360 --> 00:44:14.639
Like the parties used to be much more involved in all of that before those powers were legislated away.
00:44:14.800 --> 00:44:20.159
People would like engage in like local rallying of nominating of all these different sorts of things.
00:44:20.239 --> 00:44:22.000
And so people knew how the system worked.
00:44:22.159 --> 00:44:30.639
And Tocqueville is noticing this when he's wandering across the United States, is that people always, when speaking to him, always seem to be addressing him as though he were an audience, right?
00:44:30.800 --> 00:44:33.440
Because they're used to addressing meetings all the time.
00:44:33.599 --> 00:44:42.719
Uh and uh and it only feels uh a liberal neutrality can really only exist if you don't have to go to those meetings and you're always on the receiving end of all the good things that come from it.
00:44:42.880 --> 00:44:53.840
And as that money has dried up for more and more people and the patronage has become increasingly targeted to specific interest groups, you know, that lie has pretty much been been discovered by everyone.
00:44:53.920 --> 00:45:00.559
And the problem with the, you know, the integralist alternative is like, well, why don't we make all of these things right-wing Catholics?
00:45:00.719 --> 00:45:06.800
And it's like the thing about this kind of patronage and bureaucracy is that it can't be those things.
00:45:07.039 --> 00:45:18.159
Um all the institutions in place to vet people into those offices and all the publicly acceptable criteria for entering into those things are pretty much locked in place, but so is the operation themselves.
00:45:19.039 --> 00:45:25.119
Bureaucrats do not have the same adherence to tradition that we were describing, that you were describing earlier.
00:45:25.280 --> 00:45:27.440
Uh, and in fact, they have the opposite, right?
00:45:27.519 --> 00:45:39.679
They all live in these enormous uh one-bedroom apartment complexes in like northern Virginia, and they're completely, you know, uh without any kind of tradition or context because this building was built like in 2013, right?
00:45:39.760 --> 00:45:51.840
Like uh, so you end up with a a real problem of of a loss of connection that um that makes the kind of post-liberal vision you have hard, right?
00:45:52.079 --> 00:46:00.239
Uh, and therefore they inevitably become part of this uh this sort of left-aligned uh politics because that's all there is left.
00:46:01.599 --> 00:46:16.079
Well, and and certainly I think that sadly the right is is following suit in that way, the more that it is adhering to these statist principles and not the Republican ones that we are actually seeing the right slip away from being conservative.
00:46:16.400 --> 00:46:19.280
And that that's something that I regret personally very, very much.
00:46:19.760 --> 00:46:29.519
Um the the move into the into the future is certainly going to be a a definition though of what the end of politics is.
00:46:29.599 --> 00:46:31.920
Like what's the purpose of all of this?
00:46:32.239 --> 00:46:35.679
And and here's something I'd I'd like to pose to you as a as a question.
00:46:35.840 --> 00:46:38.480
Is it what what is the end of politics?
00:46:40.159 --> 00:46:45.679
Well, I think the preamble of the Constitution does a very good job of articulating what those ends are.
00:46:45.920 --> 00:46:49.039
So when I I was taken aback, I was like, can I remember it verbatim?
00:46:49.199 --> 00:46:50.079
The answer is no.
00:46:50.320 --> 00:46:51.760
Uh but there's the you know, general welfare.
00:46:52.239 --> 00:46:53.280
All of us can be Larry Arn.
00:46:53.760 --> 00:46:54.400
No, no, no.
00:46:55.199 --> 00:46:58.000
No one will ever be Larry Arn.
00:46:59.280 --> 00:47:07.039
You know, uh provide for the uh common defense, uh general welfare, um uh for ourselves and our posterity.
00:47:07.360 --> 00:47:09.360
Um I just described that as the common good.
00:47:09.440 --> 00:47:11.920
I saw you you sort of took reservation for that.
00:47:12.159 --> 00:47:19.280
Um now the thing uh the thing about um the way that I'm describing the common good is that it's not explicitly in sectarian terms.
00:47:19.440 --> 00:47:23.599
Often this is treated as uh as a kind of liberal concession.
00:47:23.679 --> 00:47:25.440
Um I'm not willing to call it that.
00:47:25.519 --> 00:47:28.400
And the reason is describe that a little bit more before you move on.
00:47:28.800 --> 00:47:41.360
Yeah, the the reason for that that uh that being called a liberal concession is that it's seen as the separation of church and state, um, as uh as like um privatizing religion or indifferentism.
00:47:41.599 --> 00:47:46.960
Um uh Rusty Reno got on my case about this a few years ago when we were talking about John Courtney Murray.
00:47:47.199 --> 00:47:53.519
And uh I understood where he was coming from, but in the American context, this isn't even one about Catholicism.
00:47:53.679 --> 00:48:02.320
This is one about Church of England congregationalists uh wanting to protect their own establishments, uh, which they don't really succeed in doing.
00:48:02.480 --> 00:48:14.880
Um, and the reason they don't succeed in doing this is because in the con in the condition of pluralism, um the the uh the best option is for no one to receive state money or for everyone to receive state money.
00:48:14.960 --> 00:48:25.119
And since no one could agree on who everyone is, you know, uh what would the religions do and do don't count, they just decided no one will receive uh state money.
00:48:25.199 --> 00:48:27.599
And then eventually that turns into, well, not Catholics.
00:48:27.679 --> 00:48:29.440
And that's where we run into a problem, right?
00:48:29.599 --> 00:48:31.679
Where uh that's my next book.
00:48:31.920 --> 00:48:46.079
Um uh and it's not until the 2000s is a Trinity Lutheran case in 2017 where this finally gets remedied and we get rid of these things called Blaine amendments uh that opens um uh religious groups up to state spending.
00:48:46.159 --> 00:48:47.440
But anyway, I'm sorry for that.
00:48:47.599 --> 00:48:51.199
That um that was more policy, not principle.
00:48:51.360 --> 00:48:53.679
Uh so I'm gonna throw this pen at you.
00:48:53.920 --> 00:48:54.320
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:48:55.039 --> 00:49:02.320
Uh so uh in this case, what you're doing is you're engaging in um uh the protection of individual dignity, right?
00:49:02.400 --> 00:49:10.880
So people have a right to religious freedom, uh, and that religious freedom uh is one that understands what our duties are to God, right?
00:49:10.960 --> 00:49:13.039
That's the Ciceronian definition of it.
00:49:13.199 --> 00:49:17.599
Uh and uh the state can't make those decisions for you because the state isn't you.
00:49:17.760 --> 00:49:25.280
That's uh that's an unalienable right in the terms of Jefferson's day and constitutionalism, an unalienable right, it's one that you cannot delegate, right?
00:49:25.440 --> 00:49:32.960
So that uh in the same way that Governor DeSantis, when I was living in Florida, could not be baptized on behalf of my children, right?
00:49:33.119 --> 00:49:40.639
I, you know, can't uh uh I can't delegate to the state of Florida what my conscience uh should be doing, uh, or uh and the like.
00:49:40.800 --> 00:49:48.960
Uh and so in that respect, what you're doing is you're preserving the liberty and the uh of the individual to serve God in his or her individual capacity.
00:49:49.519 --> 00:49:56.719
Um and the problem with uh the attempt to impose these kinds of religions is as I said before, is you have the double charging, right?
00:49:56.800 --> 00:50:01.280
Suddenly you're like taxing someone uh to pay for a church they don't belong to.
00:50:01.360 --> 00:50:07.519
That's a violation of both, you know, the state's responsibility for protecting property rights, but also of conscience rights, right?
00:50:07.599 --> 00:50:10.800
These are now paying for churches that you don't belong to and would never attend.
00:50:10.960 --> 00:50:16.719
Uh and so these are the kinds of problems you run into um uh when talking about liberalism, right?
00:50:16.800 --> 00:50:20.960
Is that uh for what to what purpose are we separating the church and the state here?
00:50:21.119 --> 00:50:27.519
For the liberal, the answer is to eliminate any public role for religion and setting the ends for the common, you know, for the people.
00:50:27.679 --> 00:50:40.960
And for the Republican, it's uh to avoid violence uh and disagreement over this question by returning the issue to the individuals so that they can be duly informed uh by their churches on how to serve the good.
00:50:41.119 --> 00:50:51.599
Um, Fulton Sheen, like Blessed Archbishop Fulton Sheen, talks about this as, you know, uh, you know, would to God that we could all pray in the same church, but we can at least pray together on our knees, right?
00:50:51.679 --> 00:50:57.280
The idea being that like um it's too bad that we can't, you know, Sheen wanted everyone to be Catholic, right?
00:50:57.519 --> 00:51:18.480
Converts everyone that comes into contact with him, uh, but he's willing to make, you know, very generous concessions in his view as a as a bishop, uh, to to provide for the kind of republican freedom that individuals possess in a pluralistic society like the United States to experience the same kind of defense of religious and spiritual formation so that they can then be good citizens.
00:51:19.599 --> 00:51:29.360
Yeah, I I still think this is this is you know a conversation that you're uh contextualizing within an overarching sovereign project, right?
00:51:29.440 --> 00:51:49.760
And again, that's that's the critique that I I would hold on on the modern project is that those rights are not being naturally uh percolated and then unknown by the state, but is being actually added to the state register as something to track, as something to define, as something to defend.
00:51:49.920 --> 00:52:02.960
So I mean, a really easy example is as soon as you give these rights to kids to change their gender, then the state has to go in and penetrate into the household and arrest the dad who's trying to resist the child from changing their gender, right?
00:52:03.119 --> 00:52:04.239
Going through a surgery, right?
00:52:04.480 --> 00:52:13.840
This is like the prin like a prime example of the state destroying thicker, better political units.
00:52:14.239 --> 00:52:20.800
That's the family in exchange for it having its monopoly on power, right?
00:52:21.119 --> 00:52:24.480
So that I think is is a sorry, do you would you like to say something like that?
00:52:26.159 --> 00:52:41.440
So that I think is is is the principal um problem that we're that I'm seeing with with the overall project and the overall critique of integralism is that the republicanism actually doesn't go far enough into getting out of the modern political project.
00:52:41.599 --> 00:53:07.519
Aaron Ross Powell So Russell Hittinger in his recent book on the dignity of society makes a um rather uh striking claim that the great sin of modern politics, I'm paraphrasing here, um, but the great sin of modern politics is the state claims a monopoly on dignity, right, right, and and tries to um uh through permissions grant dignity to lower forms, right?
00:53:07.920 --> 00:53:15.840
And from this flows a number of important distinctions, like a distinction between subsidiarity and devolution or decentralization, right?
00:53:15.920 --> 00:53:27.119
Subsidiarity being a description, um, a state of affairs, a state of being that is justly ordered, whereas decentralization and devolution kind of give the game away, right?
00:53:27.199 --> 00:53:34.000
Because it assumes that power begins in the center rather than at the at the authority to which it ought to be rightly delegated by by justice.
00:53:34.239 --> 00:53:40.079
So um I I want to press into this question about the about the nature of the nature of the state.
00:53:40.400 --> 00:53:43.519
Can we get beyond the state?
00:53:43.760 --> 00:53:47.599
Is that part of what uh good post-liberalism would involve?
00:53:47.760 --> 00:53:49.840
Or is that simply impossible?
00:53:51.039 --> 00:53:55.039
Um yes, uh I think I think we can.
00:53:55.280 --> 00:54:03.920
Um and uh the way that you do that is, you know, I was thinking about, I just I just interviewed Brad Burzer, who's got a book on the Declaration.
00:54:04.000 --> 00:54:13.280
And one of the things that he emphasizes a great deal in the book is um uh the the kind of ancestral rights of the Anglo-Saxon, right?
00:54:13.440 --> 00:54:15.280
Now, are they really ancestral rights?
00:54:15.840 --> 00:54:42.000
It's kind of like a little bit of mythmaking going on here, Burzer wants to say, you know, but uh one of the things that leads to the Battle of Lexington is that these um these uh these American militiamen believe that one way you show to the crown in the presence of its his soldiers, the crown soldiers, that you are at like, you know, the end of your rope is that you have a militia formation on the town green to show that you are ready to defend these rights.
00:54:42.159 --> 00:54:46.960
And the and the British understood this to be a show of force that needed immediate suppression.
00:54:47.119 --> 00:54:51.119
And that's sort of like the the tradition versus the modern, right?
00:54:51.199 --> 00:54:53.199
Like, I'm going to show you my manliness.
00:54:53.360 --> 00:54:57.440
The response is threat of like the empire, suppress, suppress.
00:54:57.679 --> 00:55:01.440
Uh, and that's how we talked about it in the interview, and it's a it was it was very interesting.
00:55:01.519 --> 00:55:06.719
But that's and that goes to like the idea of tradition versus modern, gemeinschaft versus Gesellschaft.
00:55:06.880 --> 00:55:11.519
Um, and the way that you restore these uh these traditions is you just start doing them.
00:55:11.760 --> 00:55:22.800
Um uh you you can just start you know a process of engaging in traditional formation of associations that then Wait, do you have to register a 501c3 first?
00:55:22.880 --> 00:55:25.679
Or no, no, you can just hold meetings, dude.
00:55:25.760 --> 00:55:26.639
It is great.
00:55:27.039 --> 00:55:32.000
You know, I say this as the president of a 501c3 group, the Ciceronian Society, you guys.
00:55:32.239 --> 00:55:34.719
Um donate to them after ISI, right.
00:55:35.440 --> 00:55:37.280
You know, I know where I'm at right after that.
00:55:37.440 --> 00:55:42.159
But uh, you know, the uh uh but the uh the you can just do that.
00:55:42.320 --> 00:55:54.320
Uh and uh one of the really depilitating habits that um a wealthy society like the United States has is accustomed to having things done for you, right?
00:55:54.480 --> 00:56:00.639
Uh right, you know, Uber Eats exists for a reason, you know, the idea of meal delivery, you don't have to make your own food, right?
00:56:00.719 --> 00:56:09.760
So we're accustomed to delegating or uh this kind of decision-making to other groups, and then we're unhappy when other groups do things in their own interests rather than ours.
00:56:09.920 --> 00:56:17.280
Uh and uh the way historically Americans have been able to influence political change is that they've had these associations they can join.
00:56:17.440 --> 00:56:21.519
And of course, the trouble is that uh a lot of these have been legislated away.
00:56:21.679 --> 00:56:28.800
So it's going to, you know, like the parties are now incredibly regulated and they're uh and efforts to reform them have only made them more so.
00:56:29.119 --> 00:56:31.679
And so you have to find the open option here.
00:56:31.840 --> 00:56:34.159
And really, these are like local elections, right?
00:56:34.480 --> 00:56:44.079
You can start to have influence and organize uh on that level, create um advocacy groups uh that uh petition at a higher level.
00:56:44.239 --> 00:56:49.599
Um and but when you do this, you don't do it in a way that's designed for like a movement.
00:56:49.760 --> 00:56:53.039
This is the thing is you want to have an alternative way of life in mind here.
00:56:53.119 --> 00:56:58.079
So it's not just that you're doing the politics, it's that you're doing the livelihood behind the politics.
00:56:58.320 --> 00:57:00.480
And this is the really inconvenient stuff.
00:57:00.559 --> 00:57:02.639
This means like you have to start going to meetings.
00:57:02.960 --> 00:57:04.400
You can't be terminally online.
00:57:05.039 --> 00:57:07.199
Well, I mean, someone has to be.
00:57:07.360 --> 00:57:11.280
Uh no, no, no, no, unfortunately, you cannot be terminally online.
00:57:11.360 --> 00:57:12.159
In fact, that doesn't help.
00:57:12.239 --> 00:57:15.840
But that's in a way, being terminally online is like the substitute, right?
00:57:15.920 --> 00:57:17.360
You feel engaged.
00:57:17.519 --> 00:57:20.480
But I mean, did you did you get a county commissioner elected?
00:57:20.639 --> 00:57:22.239
It's like, no, but my post went viral.
00:57:22.480 --> 00:57:25.519
It's like, you know, you're not even in a monetizable uh follower count.
00:57:25.760 --> 00:57:29.119
And I'm saying, I'm not saying this is a person who's bitter about his follower count.
00:57:30.880 --> 00:57:32.800
Despite how terminally online he is.
00:57:35.039 --> 00:57:45.360
You know, I I I I do think that the state is is the the problem and that it is a form of government that is unjustifiable as a for a Christian.
00:57:45.519 --> 00:57:50.000
And because for the Christian, the end of politics is virtue, right?
00:57:50.159 --> 00:58:06.320
That is the if politics is the art of living together, living well, then in virtue that is acquired, the moral virtues at least, only in the act of life, only in living do you actually acquire the moral virtue, says Thomas Aquinas.
00:58:06.800 --> 00:58:12.320
And therefore, if the end of uh politics is virtue, then you have to ask, well, why is that?
00:58:12.480 --> 00:58:27.519
And of course, this is this is the answer, is that our that the purpose of our life, the purpose of our our groups, of our communions, of our societies today is in fact nothing else other than the adoration of the Holy Trinity.
00:58:27.840 --> 00:58:30.639
That is why we were made, that is why we are here.
00:58:30.880 --> 00:58:37.280
We're sinful, we fall, and it is Christ that lifts us back that we might gaze upon his sacred face.
00:58:37.599 --> 00:58:50.639
And politics is an expression by which we achieve that end by the effort of being able to group in such a way as to occasion virtue.
00:58:51.199 --> 00:58:55.840
Our time as Aquinas also says that law is the pedagogue, right?
00:58:55.920 --> 00:58:59.360
It teaches us what should be what we should do.
00:58:59.760 --> 00:59:13.840
But that uh acquisition of virtue comes not just through doing the right thing, but of identifying what that right thing is and then willing it or purposefully doing it or actually.
00:59:14.320 --> 00:59:18.400
If you don't do it for the right reason, then that destroys everything.
00:59:18.480 --> 00:59:21.440
And this is precisely what the state cannot do.
00:59:22.079 --> 00:59:25.360
The state cannot tell me to act virtuously.
00:59:25.760 --> 00:59:35.760
If she tells me to do something, then it it is by threat and by fear or by market coercion that she compels me to act in a certain way.
00:59:35.920 --> 00:59:46.079
And this is the obvious example is is you know, a soldier comes to your door, you know, knocks on it, you open it up, puts a gun in your face, and says, get out.
00:59:47.199 --> 00:59:48.800
You are not getting out of your house.
00:59:48.960 --> 00:59:55.760
I hope you get out of your house at that point, you are not going to leave your house for the same reason that the soldier wants you out.
00:59:56.079 --> 01:00:00.480
You are leaving your house for self-preservation, and you should, of course.
01:00:01.280 --> 01:00:22.159
But notice there that the deputy of the state is not occasionally the right reason for your actions, that they are making you more egocentric, focused on self-preservation, and less in terms of uh acting for duty and responsibility of self-giving, of kinosis.
01:00:23.199 --> 01:00:39.039
That is what the family does in spades is that father teaches son to act, to act well, to care for mom, to grandma, to the rest of the family, and from the family spills out upon the rest of society.
01:00:39.760 --> 01:00:48.880
So precisely it is the state's inability to occasion uh right uh action for the right reason.
01:00:49.920 --> 01:00:56.880
Of course they can they can incentivize things, but think about a state pr paying for a Corpus Christi procession.
01:00:57.119 --> 01:01:02.800
How is that any different than a state paying for a a gay pride parade?
01:01:03.199 --> 01:01:16.719
It actually is the same operation, and in neither case is one acting for the right reason in that regard, perhaps individuals could, but it would not be the occasion it would not be the occasioning of the state to do it.
01:01:17.599 --> 01:01:35.920
Yeah, oh I would just say that um i they if you change the example slightly, and instead of it being a soldier whose name you don't know, maybe you'll see their rank, what if it's a militiaman who's like three doors down from you and they're they're knocking on your door in order to defend the community from like the British invasion, right?
01:01:36.079 --> 01:01:42.159
And this sort of shows you not the British like the Beatles, but like, you know, the the British are coming, sort of British invasion.
01:01:42.400 --> 01:01:50.320
Um uh uh and what you have there is uh is now this it's the same end, right, rather than different ends, right?
01:01:50.400 --> 01:01:52.559
Because you're there to he wants you to protect too.
01:01:52.800 --> 01:01:53.119
Right.
01:01:53.360 --> 01:02:04.480
And um the way that the Americans This is very much of a conservative impulse that you're you're talking about like let's reduce this down to the local, to the known, so that you can act knowingly, right?
01:02:04.800 --> 01:02:12.000
And they understood they have these rights by custom, but that the custom is in observance to something they learned from the church.
01:02:12.639 --> 01:02:13.039
Right.
01:02:13.199 --> 01:02:17.039
And that's really where the definitions of rights are supposed to be, right?
01:02:17.199 --> 01:02:33.920
And when Sheen talks about this in the context of, you know, for too long people have asked the church to serve democracy, you know, democracy should serve the church by protecting her libertas ecclesia in order to form people into the citizens that can be formed, uh, that the only the church can form them into.
01:02:34.239 --> 01:02:47.840
Uh, and and that's um when I so whenever it sounds as though like I'm appealing to like a state and these abstract rights, uh it it maybe it's because of the nature of the language um or because of my own inability to speak well.
01:02:48.000 --> 01:03:07.280
Uh uh, but what I'm usually referring to uh is that sense of rights, which is um that uh the only reason that they exist at this gazelle shot, this sort of large scale uh is because we have a federated constitution in which states are permanently bound by union, not because I imagine the state is a liberatory body.
01:03:07.360 --> 01:03:10.960
That's like exactly the opposite of the position I take.
01:03:11.119 --> 01:03:13.280
Although it does it does sort of indicate something.
01:03:13.360 --> 01:03:17.599
Like if I do sound like I'm saying that, it might be that this is just how rights talk sounds to people now.
01:03:17.760 --> 01:03:20.000
Like I can't even escape it, which is a shame.
01:03:20.079 --> 01:03:25.280
And it maybe it points to the problem, how bad the problem is that Russ Itinger was uh describing.
01:03:26.239 --> 01:03:32.239
So what then should be um the relationship between law and virtue, right?
01:03:32.400 --> 01:03:38.880
If law can't compel action with the right reason, right?
01:03:38.960 --> 01:03:43.840
I'm I mean, uh we're I'm assuming that none of us sitting at this table are are Kantians, right?
01:03:44.239 --> 01:03:52.000
Um so so setting aside the the the Kantian approach to questions of of of motivation and duty, right?
01:03:52.159 --> 01:04:21.679
Um, how should we think about because I think um you know someone could be sitting at this table who would say, well, well, no, you do need law, and law can get you pretty far in creating maybe not perfectly virtuous action, but in creating conditions in which people might be led to discover what the reason is behind the law that's meant to at least habituate you in doing actions that on a super you know, surface level look look virtuous, right?
01:04:22.000 --> 01:04:23.599
I don't think any of us would disagree with that.
01:04:23.760 --> 01:04:23.920
Yeah.
01:04:24.000 --> 01:04:24.159
Right.
01:04:24.400 --> 01:04:28.960
I mean, that's the objection here is not law qua law, right, at all.
01:04:29.119 --> 01:04:32.320
It's it's law without anybody to hand it to you.
01:04:32.800 --> 01:04:35.679
That seems to be the crux of the problem.
01:04:35.840 --> 01:04:46.079
Is that nobody's as Thomas says, yeah, contextualizes it, you know, gives it, gives it the context of why it exists and and for what what justification.
01:04:46.480 --> 01:04:54.559
I mean, we just have this endless, I mean, like we're all lawyers today, you know, as as it were, trying to figure out what we can do, what we can't do.
01:04:54.960 --> 01:05:04.559
Um that the pattern and order of our life is just so absurdly defined by those that we do not know and have never told us why we do what we do, right?
01:05:04.880 --> 01:05:08.320
And that that's that's the essence of the problem for the tradition.
01:05:08.480 --> 01:05:19.840
And of course, uh again, sorry to sound like a broken clock at this point, but to to return to that same point is that should your laws arise from custom, they would be.
01:05:20.639 --> 01:05:33.599
But as soon as they are that not uh organically defined by the community around you, but are projected upon you by those unknown, that's where we start to get our uh our qualms.
01:05:33.679 --> 01:05:34.960
And this is one thing that I do love.
01:05:35.039 --> 01:05:57.599
I mean, you make a good distinction between American liberalism and French liberalism, and uh what a radically different experience that we've had and some of the glories that America enjoys is precisely because of that conservative, not liberal, but conservative um orientation that we have, that we want it local, that we actually love the people around us, and that we are desperate to.
01:05:58.400 --> 01:05:59.679
I mean, this is a movement of away.
01:06:00.400 --> 01:06:04.880
From absolutism and away from liberalism of why we came over here in the first place.
01:06:05.039 --> 01:06:06.719
Like, let us find real freedom again.
01:06:06.880 --> 01:06:09.039
Let us conduct real cult custom again.
01:06:09.199 --> 01:06:10.719
Let us love our families again.
01:06:10.960 --> 01:06:15.920
Let those be let there be more political actors once again.
01:06:16.159 --> 01:06:17.039
That's what we want here.
01:06:17.360 --> 01:06:19.360
I really yeah, that was great.
01:06:19.519 --> 01:06:23.039
I really like the um the question too.
01:06:23.519 --> 01:06:34.639
Um I mean there was, I want to say it was around 2019, like there was a lot of intensity about drag queen story hours at libraries.
01:06:34.880 --> 01:06:44.559
Um and and then the drag queen story hour at a local public library then turned to questions of like national importance.
01:06:44.800 --> 01:06:53.760
And under no circumstances can winning a federal election influence the decision of the public library, right?
01:06:53.840 --> 01:06:56.079
Those are that's not how federalism works.
01:06:56.239 --> 01:06:57.760
That is the opposite of how federalism works.
01:06:58.000 --> 01:06:59.440
Yeah, this is a great point in making it.
01:06:59.760 --> 01:07:06.639
And and so if you don't like drag queen story hours happening at local libraries, you you deal with the library, right?
01:07:06.800 --> 01:07:13.760
And the reason why it was such a visceral response for people is a lot of people don't want drag queen story hour at public libraries.
01:07:14.000 --> 01:07:23.840
Um, and uh, and uh unlike you know, like UFC 250 Freedom, uh whatever, you know, that that's really far away for most people.
01:07:24.000 --> 01:07:32.880
But you know, if you have libraries that are close by, that's something you can A change, but B also has more of an influence on your daily life if you take your kids to that library.
01:07:33.119 --> 01:07:40.159
Um, and so that uh the salience of the experience was based on the sense that this could be a local issue for me.
01:07:40.320 --> 01:07:41.760
I should go find that out.
01:07:41.920 --> 01:07:44.239
But then the solution was really far away.
01:07:44.400 --> 01:07:51.119
Like it was like, you know, um, you know, uh some kind of matter for someone to drain the swamp over.
01:07:51.280 --> 01:07:54.239
But you don't you can drain the swamp and still have drag queen story hour.
01:07:54.400 --> 01:07:55.440
Those two things happen at the same time.
01:07:55.599 --> 01:08:04.320
I feel like I'm setting the table a little too long on this because my point is that if you don't want that to happen, uh if you think this is bad for virtue, um probably is, right?
01:08:04.400 --> 01:08:09.920
It's you know, drag queens really like emerged as a kind of like cabaret institution for gay men.
01:08:10.000 --> 01:08:21.119
It's not really like historically been uh children's educational format, uh uh uh, you know, uh, then what you do is you get involved at the local level.
01:08:21.359 --> 01:08:33.359
And what you might discover is that like maybe the drag queens are like not all that bad, and you can figure out like what if they want to do this kind of thing, maybe they just don't do it at the public library.
01:08:33.520 --> 01:08:38.079
And what the library does instead is have have books in it, right?
01:08:38.159 --> 01:08:40.880
Like that's you know, I'm I'm not not to go too out of what book?
01:08:41.119 --> 01:08:42.560
What book should be included, by the way?
01:08:43.359 --> 01:08:48.399
The thing is that not only is why post-liberalism failed to be its own section at that library.
01:08:48.560 --> 01:08:53.680
No, uh uh, but the the uh the the uh the thing about this uh is that you can just do that, right?
01:08:53.840 --> 01:08:55.439
Like you can just go to these libraries.
01:08:55.520 --> 01:09:00.960
So like the thing that made it feel so visceral was like, oh my gosh, I think this happened in our neighborhood.
01:09:01.119 --> 01:09:04.159
It's like, well, you can just not have that, right?
01:09:04.239 --> 01:09:11.359
You can try to sort something out, and then what you can have at the library are things that you like, you know, or you could have a library at your church.
01:09:11.520 --> 01:09:15.680
Uh but again, all of these sound like things that someone else should be doing, right?
01:09:15.760 --> 01:09:19.920
Like, and in the Catholic context, there's always a sense of like, why isn't the priest doing more?
01:09:20.079 --> 01:09:22.000
And it's like, have you met the priest?
01:09:22.239 --> 01:09:27.520
The person, like, you know, the priest is usually working a lot and their resources are limited at a at a church.
01:09:27.600 --> 01:09:31.439
And so what you subsidize usually isn't in terms of money but your own time.
01:09:31.520 --> 01:09:40.479
And so a lot of times the unwillingness of people to do like a lot of the work at the local level is why you end up with people who are willing to do the work making the decision.
01:09:40.560 --> 01:09:44.159
So the person who wanted drag queen story hour, they just showed up and asked for it.
01:09:44.239 --> 01:09:45.359
What did you do?
01:09:48.000 --> 01:09:53.439
It is it is a tremendous amount that you can do at a local level and to completely transform the world that you're doing.
01:09:53.600 --> 01:09:56.079
You could start a new university for people working in the trade.
01:09:56.560 --> 01:09:59.279
Holy smokes, just an option available for people.
01:09:59.600 --> 01:10:04.479
But um you know, to take to take Steven Build perhaps as a quick example.
01:10:04.560 --> 01:10:21.760
I mean, everything from you know, the streetscape is able to be changed, you know, uh like coming of taking down streetlights and putting putting in uh you know trees along your your downtown, that you can take something that couldn't have been uglier and actually make it beautiful.
01:10:22.560 --> 01:10:33.920
This is really uh a demonstration of just how much power there is in what is a state-based regime.
01:10:34.640 --> 01:10:39.279
And the reason why is pretty obvious is that the state actually does not have that much control.
01:10:39.680 --> 01:10:45.680
Like it will only be able to penetrate and break up your family if you invite it into your family.
01:10:46.000 --> 01:11:18.319
But the greatest, strongest forms of power that you have within your friendships and within your loved ones, that that is power that is a frightening thing to state sovereignty, that that jeopardizes its entire schema because when you are completely dedicated and faithful to one another and committed to one another, then you are ferociously attempting to change and better the lives of everyone around you.
01:11:18.399 --> 01:11:22.239
And that means that the political landscape begins to look radically different.
01:11:22.640 --> 01:11:28.319
You know, you had uh the 70s, you had um um Lemon v.
01:11:28.399 --> 01:11:45.680
Kurtzman decide on this like very radical separation of church and state, and continued efforts among people uh to engage in public acts of religious uh free exercise, to which they are very well entitled, although published uh punished publicly, eventually led to the ending of that Lemon v.
01:11:45.840 --> 01:11:58.000
Kurtzman with Kennedy versus Bremerton, in which um, you know, Coach Kennedy prays publicly by himself on a public field, and that was you know enough to get him in all sorts of trouble, but he was ultimately vindicated.
01:11:58.159 --> 01:12:14.560
And so, whenever I hear this idea of like the state is too powerful as a liberal institution, it will exterminate religious free exercise if unless like you co-opt the state and then force um the liberals that once ran it into submission, it's like no.
01:12:14.880 --> 01:12:29.039
Like Coach Kennedy preyed on a field and uh found like-minded attorneys willing to defend him, gratis, in order to get one of the great civil liberties restored that should have never been taken away in the first place.
01:12:29.199 --> 01:12:42.159
And so it really does take private acts of courage, and it gets this issue of virtue you were just describing, where um you can never see the law uh alone as a source of virtue when also there needs to be um the church.
01:12:42.319 --> 01:12:44.239
You know, the church is a source of virtue.
01:12:44.399 --> 01:12:48.000
Um and uh and that was certainly the case for Coach Kennedy, right?
01:12:48.640 --> 01:12:56.079
His conviction for restoring religious free exercise came not because of like a political theology, but because of his love for Jesus.
01:12:56.720 --> 01:13:07.920
So we're recording this in a time of year when often the Supreme Court drops decisions on us and and we all respond to them and hate them or love them depending on the decision.
01:13:08.079 --> 01:13:36.560
Um what role, since you brought up Supreme Court cases, uh what role has the judiciary had in either helping or exacerbating some of these problems that we're talking about, of of kind of um uh sort of uniformity of law across a patchwork of 50 states with different local traditions and and communities and and um yeah.
01:13:37.760 --> 01:13:48.960
Um it is uh the the the the judiciary remains one of the hardest bodies to predict and to pattern.
01:13:49.359 --> 01:14:01.279
You know, there's a whole field in political science called judicial behavior, as you know, um, being in a political science department that tries and you know to operationalize these and turn them into things to measure.
01:14:01.520 --> 01:14:11.920
Um and what I found is uh that you really should not rely on the on the courts in any individual instance.
01:14:12.319 --> 01:14:27.199
Um instead, what you need to do is you need to ensure that you at least always have a concentrated public alliance behind you, because sometimes it's gonna take a long time before judges will relent if they're on the wrong side of things.
01:14:27.439 --> 01:14:33.680
Um there's uh it's kind of an old book, but it was a new book when I was in graduate school, so it's still new to me, right?
01:14:33.920 --> 01:14:38.319
It's called The Hollow Hope, uh, and describes uh I've forgotten the author's name.
01:14:38.479 --> 01:14:41.680
Maybe, you know, uh if they have show notes for this, you can put it in there.
01:14:41.760 --> 01:14:53.119
But um, in which he describes, like for progressives, why the courts never ended up cashing in on the promise that it seemed to have in the 50s and 60s under uh Chief Justice Earl Warren.
01:14:53.279 --> 01:14:59.520
Um, eventually this is going to be the case for conservatives who are really doing well now under um the current court.
01:14:59.600 --> 01:15:08.960
Uh and the reason for this is there needs to be relatively easy opportunities for the court to find consensus decisions for them to overturn or to make.
01:15:09.359 --> 01:15:12.000
Uh and they don't do this on their own, right?
01:15:12.159 --> 01:15:14.720
Courts are always captive to what cases come to them.
01:15:14.880 --> 01:15:23.279
And so that's why it needs to be on us, if we're people that are concerned about a particular issue, to create a staging ground for those cases to make it to the court.
01:15:23.359 --> 01:15:43.760
If it's really appropriate for the court to render that verdict anyway, one last thing to think about is like the court's probably making too many hard cases uh because in many, in many um instances, Congress should be the one changing laws, but they're so averse to doing that, as Yuvall Levin has explained, you know, very eloquently, um, for reasons that you should ask Yuval about, because I'll butcher it.
01:15:45.119 --> 01:15:46.720
Yeah, Jacob, do you want to add to that?
01:15:46.880 --> 01:16:04.720
You mentioned COVID lockdowns, and and I can think of a of a couple of cases in which courts and bureaucracy over the last you know five to ten years have really acted um against against and well and I acted to exacerbate some of the problems that we're describing.
01:16:04.800 --> 01:16:05.359
Aaron Powell Right.
01:16:05.600 --> 01:16:09.920
Well, I think this is just a perfect demonstration of of this point that we're we're putting out.
01:16:10.079 --> 01:16:20.720
But you know, it is uh interesting when you talk about you know the idea of being a demonstrable force for religious freedom just preying on a on a football field.
01:16:20.800 --> 01:16:24.880
I mean it's it's uh nothing against him at all, only great respect.
01:16:25.119 --> 01:16:27.840
But listen to how pathetic we sound.
01:16:28.399 --> 01:16:35.039
You know, that we're so far off that that is a massive act of courage, right?
01:16:35.520 --> 01:16:47.680
And to think about actually just stepping out and creating thick communities, I mean, it's just I mean, how pathetic are we that we just go on Netflix or that we instead of going over and seeing a friend, we just scroll.
01:16:48.000 --> 01:16:48.159
Right.
01:16:48.319 --> 01:16:52.239
I mean, it's just I mean, we're are absurdly pathetic people.
01:16:52.640 --> 01:17:01.680
And that the uh that the power that this universalizing force has over us is self-imposed, right?
01:17:02.079 --> 01:17:06.720
And that as soon as you get out of that world, you are actually free from it.
01:17:07.119 --> 01:17:28.560
And that the that the tendrils of control and most of the decisions that are being made, as soon as you're out of these universal platforms that people actually do own and into the real world that people do not own, and that God does still, thank God, you find immense freedom, the freedom that we've always been looking for, right?
01:17:28.720 --> 01:17:48.319
The freedom that's immediately recoverable, is that they have come down to such extreme influence over our lives, and yet their their uh grip on us is so vulnerable because it really is as easy as logging off.
01:17:48.479 --> 01:17:54.159
And that is just something that we have to come to grips with and then to say, okay, I'm logging off of this.
01:17:54.239 --> 01:17:55.520
What else am I going to do?
01:17:55.680 --> 01:17:59.840
And can I start to take control of our my own entertainment?
01:18:00.000 --> 01:18:01.199
Can I take control of my food?
01:18:01.279 --> 01:18:02.239
Can I cook again?
01:18:02.319 --> 01:18:06.720
You know, can I take control of um how I'm going to die, right?
01:18:06.960 --> 01:18:15.279
You know, not dependent upon paying others to die well, but with people around me that I know that I love, that I'm not alone in those moments, right?
01:18:15.439 --> 01:18:23.199
And how is it that we can then begin to push off what I think is the real markers of our current regime?
01:18:23.439 --> 01:18:27.920
And that is the financial tyranny that we all have subjected ourselves to.
01:18:28.079 --> 01:18:31.600
You know, it doesn't matter, left, right, everybody loves money, right?
01:18:31.760 --> 01:18:42.319
And that are those are the institutions that we have built up as Americans that we need to begin to face the facts on and say, where do my desires really lie?
01:18:42.479 --> 01:18:44.640
Is it on the side of financial security?
01:18:44.800 --> 01:18:51.920
Am I going to mediate all the experiences that I want to have through money, or am I willing to actually have friendships again?
01:18:52.159 --> 01:18:52.560
Right?
01:18:52.720 --> 01:18:54.560
Are those institutions going to change?
01:18:54.720 --> 01:18:56.720
Those are hard, hard decisions.
01:18:57.119 --> 01:18:59.840
As academics, I think we've voted against academics.
01:19:00.079 --> 01:19:04.159
It's easier for us to the next room that we can vote again.
01:19:04.399 --> 01:19:04.880
Yeah.
01:19:05.279 --> 01:19:07.279
I couldn't afford this place again.
01:19:08.800 --> 01:19:10.239
Yeah, we're like Franciscans.
01:19:10.319 --> 01:19:11.680
We just use it.
01:19:11.760 --> 01:19:12.479
We don't own it.
01:19:14.720 --> 01:19:33.359
So one of the questions I had wanted to ask both of you was as we approach the 250th of the of the declaration, um, what are your, you know, um, given given our conversation about post-liberalism, um, are you optimistic for the next 250 years?
01:19:33.600 --> 01:19:35.439
Um, are we doomers?
01:19:35.600 --> 01:19:38.399
Like what's the what's the prognosis?
01:19:38.560 --> 01:19:50.239
How should we go into celebrating um clear-eyed, but not necessarily um, you know, clear-eyed, but you can be optimistic as well as pessimistic.
01:19:50.479 --> 01:19:53.680
Um, how should we go into celebrating July 4th this year?
01:19:54.159 --> 01:20:04.960
Well, uh Blessed Blessed Sheen, uh Fulton Sheen said that uh the Declaration of Independence uh is uh the gospel given to a democracy, right?
01:20:05.039 --> 01:20:14.640
Uh it defends man on the basis of uh uh uh on his on his uh dignity in the same way Christ defended him uh from sin on the cross.
01:20:14.720 --> 01:20:16.640
I'm I'm butchering that obviously.
01:20:16.720 --> 01:20:20.239
Uh but he was very he was very fond of the declaration, right?
01:20:20.399 --> 01:20:26.640
Man, he says uh government was founded on account of man in the same way the church was founded to save him, I think is how he puts it.
01:20:26.960 --> 01:20:29.840
Um and so I like the declaration.
01:20:29.920 --> 01:20:31.119
I think it's really good.
01:20:31.359 --> 01:20:36.399
Um I think it's gonna, you know, probably acquit us well if we try to live closer to it.
01:20:36.560 --> 01:20:42.479
I think the thing about the declaration um is that it often becomes a little toutemic.
01:20:42.800 --> 01:21:05.439
Um, where like it's the the thing about the uh the terms use in it is that they I don't know, lose meaning, you hear them a lot, and um, and then they get uh because we often are so familiar with the terms, we sort of uh don't know what they mean and don't care, right?
01:21:05.600 --> 01:21:09.439
And uh then that's when people can engage in malfeasance with it, right?
01:21:09.520 --> 01:21:16.159
They can start to redefine what the decl like what independence is and uh what what people are supposed to take a lessons from.
01:21:16.239 --> 01:21:24.079
And eventually you also had presidents like Woodrow Wilson who ran against it as like out of out of step with reality as it as it is now.
01:21:24.239 --> 01:21:34.319
But the closer I think that we return to the Declaration of Independence as a religiously informed people, I think the more use you can have in preserving America.
01:21:34.399 --> 01:21:36.800
America has a lot of material advantages, right?
01:21:36.880 --> 01:21:43.920
Uh it's a unified nation on a like occupies a tremendous amount of territory, it's got a tremendous amount of natural resources.
01:21:44.159 --> 01:21:49.840
Um uh as Tocqueville put it, we have no great neighbors, which isn't a slight of Canada and Mexico, right?
01:21:49.920 --> 01:21:55.359
It's more like, you know, France has got like a lot of people around it that were dangerous to them, and certainly Russia did, right?
01:21:55.439 --> 01:21:56.399
And places like that.
01:21:56.560 --> 01:22:02.720
Uh so we're we're all we're protected by two oceans, and so we could live sort of like the state of California does, right?
01:22:02.800 --> 01:22:08.159
Which is like it's got so many advantages, it can just kind of screw up for a long time and not perceive any disadvantages.
01:22:08.239 --> 01:22:17.840
But now California is slowly losing track and is as a result of what made it California, is now it's like clinging to what's made it the worst of the state.
01:22:17.920 --> 01:22:25.039
And so the United States will often do this, and I think that's a reference to the financial problems that um Jacob brought up.
01:22:25.279 --> 01:22:36.159
And I've noticed this where um uh as people become increasingly scared about their financial future, they become more concerned with money, right?
01:22:36.319 --> 01:22:41.680
Like it's not, you know, the it is not a vow of of poverty that any of us took, right?
01:22:41.760 --> 01:22:44.720
That's that's for the Franciscans, not for us, right?
01:22:44.800 --> 01:22:45.920
If we're having kids.
01:22:46.159 --> 01:22:57.199
Uh and uh and so the way that I think people often want to uh imagine the future of their doomers is that this is something that just sort of happens, right?
01:22:57.359 --> 01:23:03.439
And it's something that we deserve uh because of the bad things that we've wanted.
01:23:03.760 --> 01:23:13.199
When, you know, there are the human cost of a decline in the United States, I'm not sure if people are really ready to bear.
01:23:13.680 --> 01:23:33.199
You know, are we ready to I mean, the the the reference that you made to these uh these men and women dying alone in hospice, you know, that's that's where you end up when um bad people can afford they can't afford to take care of their own families, and so all they can do is pay the bare minimum for someone to take care of someone else.
01:23:33.439 --> 01:23:41.279
That's an example of a person not serving their duty to their family, but it's hard to do that in a state of financial uh uh constraint.
01:23:41.600 --> 01:23:55.760
And unfortunately, I think at least in the near term, that's gonna be how people see this country as one whose better days are behind it, and it's because of how many um financial constraints the existing um generation live under.
01:23:55.920 --> 01:24:14.560
And so it's gonna be hard to feel like there's a a beneficial future uh unless we at a time where it's the hardest, you know, that um deprive ourselves of the benefits of a financial uh future for the sake of each other.
01:24:15.199 --> 01:24:16.800
That was bleaker than I wanted it to be.
01:24:17.520 --> 01:24:18.239
So dark, man.
01:24:18.399 --> 01:24:19.039
Oh my gosh.
01:24:20.159 --> 01:24:22.800
Jacob, you're gonna take us take us darker or bring some light.
01:24:23.279 --> 01:24:24.720
Yeah, we're looking, we're looking at you for this.
01:24:25.600 --> 01:24:27.600
Something has gone horribly wrong.
01:24:29.520 --> 01:24:43.279
They say that uh hope is is uh only the desire for something greater, the expectation of something greater in the face of no source of of that uh of that conviction.
01:24:43.439 --> 01:24:50.319
But I I I I really do believe in these ideas that we build what we love, right?
01:24:50.720 --> 01:24:52.399
And we have built what we loved.
01:24:52.560 --> 01:25:00.079
And this is why I was kind of grimacing at the common good idea earlier, is that we have what we have loved has not been good.
01:25:00.239 --> 01:25:22.079
It has not been good for our communal lives together, and that I I have an abundance of hope that things are going to be could be better in the next next 250 and and perhaps will be, but it does demand us uh actually fundamentally asking why we are here.
01:25:22.640 --> 01:25:24.479
What are we to do?
01:25:24.960 --> 01:25:27.199
What do we owe to our neighbors?
01:25:27.760 --> 01:25:40.960
Those are questions that are going to define the next 250 because they will be much, much worse if we just continue to go along doing as we are now without asking the fundamental questions.
01:25:41.119 --> 01:25:52.000
And if our if our answers to those are something as p as pathetic as just I want greater civility, then it will become horrid here, right?
01:25:52.159 --> 01:25:53.680
That is for sure.
01:25:54.000 --> 01:26:14.239
But if our our transformation is actually coming in a place of of recognition of our own humility and and our own sin, then good news is that there is supernatural aid and that that is the true thing that God has wished for and planned America for as well.
01:26:14.399 --> 01:26:20.399
And that's something that I'm deeply convicted of, and so I have extremely high expectations going ahead.
01:26:20.800 --> 01:26:21.119
Thank you.
01:26:21.199 --> 01:26:22.159
You delivered light.
01:26:22.399 --> 01:26:26.479
Um we uh we have a few more minutes for some closing remarks.
01:26:26.880 --> 01:26:28.960
So um would you like to start us off?
01:26:29.439 --> 01:26:30.319
Yeah, sure.
01:26:30.560 --> 01:26:33.199
Um we ended up, I knew this would happen.
01:26:33.279 --> 01:26:45.760
Like we ended up kind of like half agreeing, and uh I knew this would happen because um uh the the we share the same concerns.
01:26:46.000 --> 01:26:50.960
Um and I won't go over the arguments of the book again.
01:26:51.039 --> 01:27:01.279
I you know, we've done a lot of that work already, um, except to say that um put your faith not in princes, right?
01:27:01.680 --> 01:27:06.159
Um this is this is the thing we we are constantly tempted to do.
01:27:06.239 --> 01:27:25.920
We see in like the example of Emperor Theodosius, you know, or sort of like romanticized accounts of um these interwar figures like Franco and Dolphus, uh, this sort of like this moment, like, oh, we almost had this moment when things would have been the best they could have ever been.
01:27:26.239 --> 01:27:28.640
No, you know, put your faith not in princes, right?
01:27:28.720 --> 01:27:34.640
And first Samuel, the account of the monarchy is one of rapaciousness, and that bears out, right?
01:27:34.800 --> 01:27:58.000
And um, you know, uh the instead, uh, once we've got that out of the way, what I would say is that it is absolutely imperative that we do not feel powerless when examining our own circumstances, um, because that's how you fall into the trap of putting your faith in princes.
01:27:58.159 --> 01:28:02.720
Find what small differences you can make uh and instead begin there.
01:28:02.880 --> 01:28:18.560
You'll find that there are many more that you'll be able to make once you discover that there are all these opportunities out there for making a difference in both your local life, but um but also for an example for others and for future generations that you might influence.
01:28:18.720 --> 01:28:21.680
As you get older, you start to see this happen.
01:28:21.920 --> 01:28:26.399
And so it's easier for me to say this, but if you're a younger person, it won't have happened yet.
01:28:26.479 --> 01:28:32.720
So instead, think about those people who maybe set you on the right path and think about how you can imitate them and be those people for others.
01:28:33.039 --> 01:28:33.199
Okay.
01:28:33.439 --> 01:28:34.800
Jacob, closing remarks.
01:28:35.199 --> 01:28:41.039
I'm just so glad that post-liberalism hasn't failed and to find that you are a fellow post-liberal along with me.
01:28:41.279 --> 01:28:45.840
So that that that was really what I wanted to discover is that we can build a community together.
01:28:47.439 --> 01:28:50.159
Look, as long as I don't have to sign on to Franco, okay.
01:28:52.479 --> 01:28:54.479
It was really lovely meeting you.
01:28:54.640 --> 01:28:57.520
I really appreciate this and the opportunity.
01:28:57.680 --> 01:29:14.000
I think that this is um this conversation is is an essential one that we all should be having today because we have to recognize again and kind of face the facts that we are not isolated rational actors in this world.
01:29:14.319 --> 01:29:15.600
We were not created this way.
01:29:15.760 --> 01:29:24.880
We were not created for the sake of just finding nonviolence and getting along just well enough, or picking the goods that we have, right?
01:29:24.960 --> 01:29:36.880
That we were built as created as social creatures, that we discover the wonders of truth and what is good only with one another.
01:29:37.199 --> 01:30:08.000
And that ultimately this political project that we have to collaborate on is something that happens first and foremost in the family as one begins to understand the life of virtue and what it's for, how to achieve it, how it's cultivated, and that that progresses out, expands out, radiates out into the rest of the world, but it doesn't escape the hard question of understanding, of of needing to answer what is the purpose of all this.
01:30:08.319 --> 01:30:12.640
And that's the thing that I'm most excited about for people to discover.

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