Post-liberalism!!
This week’s Post piece is about post-liberalism, what it is, how it gets liberalism wrong, and why I am not a fan. I have been thinking about this for a long time—I really hope you’ll read! https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/07/28/patrick-deneen-regime-change-sohrab-ahmari-tyranny-inc-review/
". . . one might still wonder why Ahmari has written such an anomalously sensible book." That's gold.
Some reflections:
To my mind, the postliberals — may I assume a family resemblance among them, at least? — are mistaken about what the terms 'liberal' and 'liberalism' are meant to name. On this I agree with you. But they're not obviously confused about the phenomena they mistakenly use those labels to name.
There is a robust tradition with good arguments concluding that state neutrality works when most of us already have a taste for the common good and have some vision of the good life that has not been shaped or dictated by the market or the state. But the decline of religiosity and other non- or sub-political traditional inheritances is leaving a vacuum being filled by an unchecked consumerist monoculture that insidiously, but no less tyrannically, imposes its vision of the good life.
If "the state expresses respect for its citizens by allowing them to determine and pursue their own values — a process that it has a duty to facilitate" — it's not obvious that the state is still expressing respect for its citizens. It's at least arguable that the state is letting the market determine the values of the polity.
The postliberals want to use state power to impose a particular vision of the good life. In this they should be resisted. But might we want to use state power to keep market logic from imposing its particular vision of the good life?
Lest I be misunderstood in my intentions, let me end by saying: You have marvelously interesting intellectual sensibilities, and I hope you keep this up.