Blessing of Unicorns: Postliberalism, third party voting, how “Studying the Midwest became cool,” and more!

One unicorn is just, well, one unicorn. Gather a herd together, and they form a Blessing of Unicorns upon your day—and best wishes for this long weekend! This week’s unicorns consider what is postliberalism, how KSP is voting, higher ed, a new novel, and a whole lot more!

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James M. Patterson in The Dispatch answers an important question many of us have probably asked over the past couple of years (I know I have!): “What Is Postliberalism?” A taste from his answer:

…postiberals have come to object to liberalism. While most Americans know the term “liberalism” as a reference to a left-of-center ideology common among Democrats, the other common use is in reference to a political theory that prioritizes individual rights as a source of political authority and human flourishing. Postliberals believe this “classical liberalism” to be a disembodied secularizing (even satanic) force that uses the language of liberty of conscience, representative government, and constitutionalism to conceal the true liberal aim of denying the authority of the highest good. In their view, liberalism has presently fallen apart, and there is now no need to “conserve” classical liberalism as movement conservatives like William F. Buckley Jr. to Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan had argued. 

On the contrary, postliberals want to end liberalism and entirely replace it with what comes next—what is literally “postliberal.” Given that liberalism entails liberty of conscience, representative government, and a constitution, none of those will be part of a postliberal order. Citizens will become subjects. Personal liberty gives way to bureaucratic discretion. Market economies are replaced by an alliance of corporate and state power.

What does that mean in policy terms? If Donald Trump wins the presidency again in November, does that mean we could be one election away from a postliberal America? The answer is, for postliberals, eventually. Postliberals have adopted a long game, believing that they will not secure policy wins all at once but rather one at a time. For example, family policy might wed middle-class voters to postliberalism like tax cuts once united them to movement conservatism. Family policy could thus become the leverage for future postliberal positions, such as giving China and Russia free hands in their spheres of influence. After all, why should America spend money defending Ukraine when the nation could spend that money on rebuilding the American family? This might sound far-fetched, but one should consider that recommendations for a middle-class welfare state and opposition to Ukraine are coming from postliberals, who are repeating messages from Viktor Orbán in the process. This is not speculation but their stated position.

Much of this is new to many ordinary American conservatives, but these arguments are actually quite old and have unpleasant roots.

This piece is worth reading in full, and I recommend that you do it. That said, one obvious observation to make here is: Donald Trump is not a postliberal; JD Vance is. So, if Trump is in charge, all of this is a moot point, because as he has stated himself in interviews, he doesn’t care what his VP thinks.

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Karen Swallow Prior explains why she’s voting third-party this November.

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A fascinating interview with Artur Rosman (editor-in-chief of Church Life Journal) about his new translation Józef Tischner’s The Philosophy of Drama.  

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Todd Shy reviews Jamie Quatro’s new novel Two-Step Devil for Comment. A taste from the introduction to this piece, which is very well worth reading in full:

In a 2012 New York Times essay, Paul Elie laments the absence of compelling portraiture of religious belief in American fiction. Christianity in particular, he argues, gets treated in fiction as “something between a dead language and a hangover.” Elie’s dispirited essay concludes with a wish: “You hope to find the writer who can dramatize belief the way it feels in your experience, at once a fact on the ground and a sponsor of the uncanny, an account of our predicament that still and all has the old power to persuade. You look for a story or a novel where the writer puts it all together.”

One reason putting it all together is so hard to do is that the writer who has actual religious beliefs can’t use fiction to shore up those beliefs or simply confess them. The novel isn’t a sermon or a hymn. Even a novel as filled with love and religious life as Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (2004) is a portrait of generational tension as well as a kind of wondrous benediction in the face of that tension. To read or write literary fiction as a believer is to put belief at risk, to submit it to pressures it may or may not withstand. Without that risk, fiction becomes allegory, or maybe honest sentiment—comfort food—but not what Elie called for, an account of our predicament.

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My favorite American historian is teaching Ohio History for the first time this fall, so he’s been on a Midwestern (and Ohio, especially) history kick. Apparently, that’s what all the cool kids are doing anyway—as Caitlin Evans notes in her profile of Jon Lauck and the field of Midwestern history, “Studying the Midwest Just Became Cool.”

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On another education-related note, Kayla Bartsch’s latest for NRO is an in-depth profile of Hamilton College, the new initiative in progress at the University of Florida. If you, like me, are curious about it, this is a helpful deep dive.

My impression from the hires so far: it’s not progressive (as promised), but many of the new hires don’t strike me as particularly conservative either. Rather, they’re doing much more traditional scholarship—focusing on topics that were more commonly found in humanities research before the 1990s or so.

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Mehmet Çiftçi for Plough reflects on political theology from another angle: “The Family is not a Church.” Why?

There are good reasons we should hesitate to refer to the family as a “domestic church” and to the church as a family… While families can be restored and reoriented by the gospel, the tension between the church and the family can never be eliminated; for instance, obligations to children and one’s spouse will limit how much time can be spent helping at a homeless shelter.

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Meanwhile, Jim Dalrymple II gives this wonderful exhortation for traveling together as a family—including (or especially?) with small children. Yes, it’s exhausting and doesn’t always (or ever?) feel glamorous, but it is a wonderful chance to work (and grow) together as a team!

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Rob Wyllie’s latest for The Lamp, “No Stage Catholics,” is about Willa Cather and much more and is worth reading in full. A taste:

One does not have to be a famous writer like Cather to seem like a stage Catholic nowadays. There are Catholic lifestyle influencers on social media. The conversions of actors, athletes, journalists, students, and whatever Russell Brand is are very public affairs now. Many zealous converts feel the burden of making a strong and respectable performance for the world—they know it will not be a popular one. They are paraded around with all the answers. Alas, they do not have all the answers. Social media gives many converts a hard yoke and a heavy burden. Gram could not give me the faith in any direct sense, obviously, but she and my mother led me as a child to where the easy yoke is found.

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Congratulations to Current Contributing Editor and Arena regular, Elizabeth Stice, whose new venture, a reviews site Orange Blossom Ordinary, is one month old this week! Check out this project.