A few quotes from R. R. Reno:
“Neoliberalism” is the word that gets tossed around to describe our current system. It describes an economic and cultural regime of deregulation and disenchantment. The ambition of neoliberalism is to weaken and eventually dissolve the strong elements of traditional society that impede the free flow of commerce (the focus of nineteenth-century liberalism), as well as identity and desire (the focus of postmodern liberalism). This may work well for the global elite, but ordinary people increasingly doubt it works for them. The disenchantment and weakening that define the postwar era liberate the talented and powerful to move fluidly through an increasingly global system. But ordinary people end up unmoored, adrift, and abandoned, so much so that they are fueling an anti-establishment rebellion that demands the return of something solid, trustworthy, and enduring.
The metaphysical character of today’s populist revolt is clearest in calls for renewed national identity in the face of perceived threats. These threats are brought into sharp relief by anxieties about mass immigration, especially in Europe. Our political establishments have inherited the postwar imperative of disenchantment. We are socialized to believe that we have a fundamental moral duty to resist populist calls for a more nationalist politics. Our establishment defends diversity and inclusion, promising that the world will be more at peace if we affirm multiculturalism. A politician or public figure who stands for something strong, whether it’s nationalism or even traditional morality, invariably gets described as “authoritarian.” In Europe we’re warned that we must prevent a return of fascism. In the United States, the inherited fear concerns renewed racism. I’ve heard sophisticated intellectuals offer sincere analysis of contemporary populism in terms of Hitler, Mussolini, and the Ku Klux Klan. This is a sign of how deeply invested our establishment is in the postwar era, encouraging us to meet every challenge with still further disenchantment.
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The populist rebellion is likely to intensify. As it does, establishment resistance will increase as well. The postwar consensus marshals cultural and political power to condemn the return of the strong gods in the strongest possible terms—racist, xenophobic, fascist, bigoted. Political correctness has many forms, but they are united in a shared repudiation of anything solid and substantial in public life, whether in the form of nationalism or strong affirmations of constraints that human nature places on any healthy society, constraints that get articulated by all forms of traditional morality. The growing ferocity of the establishment’s denunciation of anything strong further enflames the anxieties of populists, who fear that they are losing whatever remains of any solid place to stand.
This dynamic of redoubled disenchantment designed to discredit a growing populism will precipitate a series of political crises in the West. What forms the crises will take I cannot predict. The EU Court of Human Rights may reverse a national vote in the next few years, declaring the election of a right-wing candidate a violation of human rights. Or perhaps there will be some other nullification of populist sentiment. But crisis is coming. Put simply, populism wishes for something sacred in public life. National heritage is the obvious example. Yet our political culture has been so thoroughly shaped by a pattern of weakening that it cannot accommodate this desire for the sacred.
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Julia Ioffe is an accomplished journalist who writes for a variety of mainstream newspapers and magazines. I was struck, however, by her recent tweet in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election last November: “Russian govt media watchdog blocks all Russian access to YouPorn and PornHub. Is this the America you want, Donald?” It’s unwise to read too much into tweets. Perhaps she is mocking Trump for being an unlikely vehicle for the re-moralization of American society. I doubt, however, that was her intent. In all likelihood, evocation of Russia in conjunction with Trump seeks to dramatize the choice we face in 2017. Trump’s rhetoric of building walls and shredding free-trade deals evokes a trajectory of consolidating and strengthening the body politic after a long season of disenchantment and weakening. This, Ioffe seems to suggest, sets us on a road to censorship and illiberal authoritarianism. If we care about sustaining a liberal society, then however repugnant we may find ubiquitous online pornography, we need to double-down on the weakening patterns of the postwar era that minimize boundaries and lift restrictions. Which forces me to wonder: Has the high moral mission of liberalism and its noble defense of freedom really come down to unlimited access to pornography?
There are good reasons to worry about illiberalism here and abroad. Nevertheless, Ioffe’s easy association of censorship with authoritarianism and free access to pornography with liberalism is widespread. Earnest and proper liberals throughout America often express a horror of any limits on Internet access at public libraries. Such an attitude reflects an implicit affirmation of Vattimo’s view that weakening and disenchantment are a happy fate. In his view, any form of moral authority or regulation represents an evil regression back to fascism. A couple of years ago, United Nations ambassador Samantha Power sought to counter Putin’s annexation of Crimea in a symbolic way. She did so by hosting a party for Pussy Riot, a group of Russian performance artists known for staging public orgies and other transgressions. All of this is very familiar. Pussy Riot engages in now conventional strategies of disenchantment that are widely celebrated by our establishment as integral to cultural “progress.” Just as it is forbidden to forbid, today it is conventional to be unconventional.
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We are coming to a dead end. The postwar consensus now tells me that I must choose between pornographic transgression and Putinism, just as it is telling the young French woman to choose between multicultural utopianism and fascism. These are not happy choices, and a political culture that frames our most important public questions in these ways is in trouble.
As religious people, we are committed to the humanizing power of divine authority—the gracious word of God—and we need to break with the postwar consensus. We should not join our voices to the conventional denunciations of the populist desire for the renewal of strong loyalties in public life. The imperative of weakening has made many things fluid and uncertain, leaving us with little that is solid and trustworthy. It is not good for man to be alone, and it is a sign of health that our societies wish to reclaim, however haltingly, the nation, which is an important form of solidarity.
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