After Progressive Neo-Liberalism: What comes next?

At risk of understatement, it seems near certain that the age of progressive neo-liberalism is dead and buried. The political ideology that largely defined and shaped America's political life and society from the end of the Cold War to the present seems now to be a truly spent political and cultural force. The question facing us now is what comes after the whirlwind currently smashing it.

Whatever the answer, in the short-term future it won't come from the left. The next several years will be defined by the political right. The left in America will be preoccupied by trying to set their own house in order and figure out their future, whether that is a return to Bernie Sanders, circa 2016 (before his second defeat), a pivot to a kind of Fetterman-style pragmatic centrism with populist overtones, or a doubling down on Ocasio-Cortez style progressivism.

One way of sussing out the left's future might be to consider what the key foil to America's current political vision is in global politics. For most of our history, the two dominant "big bads" that American politics felt they had to solve or oppose were Catholicism and monarchism. Thus American politics would be Protestant and republican. (I am getting much of this analysis from David Ciepley.) In the years since World War II, the enemy became "totalitarianism" and so the left and right both put forth their own versions of a libertarian answer to rebut the totalitarian enemy. It seems likely that the new "enemy" as defined by American politics is "globalism." If so, then the answer is "nationalism" of some sort—and nationalism need not necessarily be a right-wing phenomenon, at least not universally so. A kind of left pro-worker populism could frame its left wing economic agenda in nationalistic terms, perhaps. (While "left wing nationalism" might sound odd to some, that phrase describes many of the non-aligned nations during the Cold War. Whether what made sense there might translate to mid 21st century America is, of course, a huge question. But historically speaking there is such a thing as "left-wing nationalism.")

In any case: The American political conversation in the post-globalization era appears set to be defined by the right, at least for the next election cycle. That said, to say the right will shape the conversation leaves a question of which part of the right that will be. Who holds the power? And what are the intellectual options that exist as "live wires" in this moment?

Below I suggest four distinct teams which basically already exist and will be live options on the American right. That said, while I think all four are viable choices that one can make, virtually all of the energy and power currently rests with two of the teams.

To try and define the key distinctives of each group as clearly as possible, I'm going to borrow the framework used by Mark Sayers in his "sin chart" concept and modify it slightly for political systems. So each of the four systems below will be described by giving their particular response to each of these questions:

• What is the world?
• What is political society and what is it for?
• What threatens political society?
• How do you address those threats?

Silicon Valley Right

The Silicon Valley Right is centered around figures such as Elon Musk, Marc Andreesen, and, most of all, Peter Thiel. Thiel was building connections and networks within the American right when Musk and Andreesen were both still giving large donations to the Democrats.

The Silicon Valley Right has emerged in the past several years because many key players in the tech industry in California came to believe that the Democrats and American progressivism were hostile to their goals and ambitions. They saw the moralizing of the social progressives as a nuisance and, increasingly, a wasted business expense in the form of DEI initiatives and positions within their companies. In some cases, such as Musk, there also were personal factors pushing them to the right, as Musk has discussed as it concerns one of his children. They also saw the restrictions and bureaucracy of the Democrats as holding back "innovation," although different individuals had different things in mind when they thought about "innovation."

For someone like Andreesen, much of the concern about stifling innovation has to do with things like crypto. For Musk, it is about manufacturing and space exploration as well as the soft forms of transhumanism he endorses through his Neuralink brain implant company. What unites all of them is a sense that technological development can unlock man's potential and free him (well, free some men) from his current state and create a better, more rational kind of world.

The Silicon Valley Right's attitude toward sex is particularly significant. On the one hand, they dislike the transgender revolution because they see it as being far too moralistic and stifling. On the other, they also reject Christian sexual norms and practices. So they arrive at a kind of libertarian, consent-based ethic with the key proviso that sexuality, like everything else, is subject to revision and transformation via technological innovation. So they are highly supportive of surrogacy, embryo screening, IVF, and other similar practices and technologies.

Additionally, via the influence of figures like Curtis Yarvin and Costin Almariu (Bronze Age Pervert) this sector of the right tends to be deeply hostile to democracy and liberalism.

What is the world? A rapidly depleting resource which won't be able to sustain the kind of life we want long-term. It needs to be subdued to our wishes so that we can overcome its limitations and achieve the life we desire. For this to happen, great men need to be unleashed to innovate and create.

What is political society and what is it for? Political society is a large economic bloc made up of innovators and consumers. It exists to facilitate the greatness and ambition of the innovators.

What threatens political society? Tyrannical bureaucracies, tired old-fashioned moralisms, and fear.

How do you address those threats? Use the hard power obtained through wealth and technology to take control of the institutions suppressing innovation and instead transform those institutions to be enablers of the innovative class.

Barstool Right

The "barstool right" is a term first coined by Matthew Walther, editor of The Lamp, several years ago. His is still the best description of this group, I think:

What Trump recognized was that there are millions of Americans who do not oppose or even care about abortion or same-sex marriage, much less stem-cell research or any of the other causes that had animated traditional social conservatives. Instead he correctly intuited that the new culture war would be fought over very different (and more nebulous) issues: vague concerns about political correctness and "SJWs," opposition to the popularization of so-called critical race theory, sentimentality about the American flag and the military, the rights of male undergraduates to engage in fornication while intoxicated without fear of the Title IX mafia. Whatever their opinions might have been 20 years ago, in 2021 these are people who, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, accept pornography, homosexuality, drug use, legalized gambling, and whatever GamerGate was about. On economic questions their views are a curious and at times incoherent mixture of standard libertarian talking points and pseudo-populism, embracing lower taxes on the one hand and stimulus checks and stricter regulation of social media platforms on the other.

I have come to think of the people who answer to the above description as "Barstool conservatives," in reference to the popular sports website, especially its founder and CEO, Dave Portnoy. For many years the political significance of Barstool was implicit at best, reflected mainly in its conflicts with Deadspin and other members of the tacitly liberal sports journalism establishment.

But in the last year, as Portnoy emerged as one of America's most visible critics of the lockdown policies instituted by virtually every state governor, it became clear to me that more so than anyone else he embodied the world view of millions of Americans, who share his disdain for the language of liberal improvement, the hectoring, schoolmarmish attitude of Democratic politicians and their allies in the media, and, above all, the elevation of risk-aversion to the level of a first-order principle by our professional classes. This, I suspect, is why in the last 24 hours I have received several text messages asking me whether I thought he had any interest in running for president. (My guess is no, though I also believe that his prospects for electoral success would be decent.)

Regardless of Portnoy's own ambitions, I fully expect the future of the Republican Party to belong to Barstool conservatives, which is to say, to a growing but so far almost invisible coalition that could very well carry the White House. The Barstool conservative movement will not have institutions in any recognizable sense, certainly not think tanks or highbrow magazines, but it will be larger, more geographically disparate, younger, and probably more male. It will also, I suspect, be more racially diverse, much like the portion of the electorate that gave Trump 74 million votes in 2020.

Another way of getting at the problem might be this: It has been a cliche for some time amongst egghead trad conservatives to use Justice Kennedy's Casey ruling as a shorthand for the moral vision of the American left: If someone lacks the ability to define their own concepts of meaning, existence, and so on, that person is not free. So a movement for political freedom required moving for people's right to self-identify, to craft their own bespoke identities, and sense of meaning, purpose, etc.

The left took this idea as an argument for big government: Government's job became the facilitation of individual identity creation. Doing this, however, eventually came to require a great deal of bureaucracy and great deal of finger-wagging moralizing, both of which are hideously unpopular with Americans and, in turn, led to the ascent of the anti-PC Barstool Right.

However, the Barstool Right's fight isn't with Justice Kennedy, but with the left's application of Kennedy. The Barstool Right is in more or less complete agreement about the right to self-identify, and so on. What they object to is the attempt to force others into doing things that violate their sense of identity. This, for example, is why biological males competing in women's sports are a scandal for the barstool right whereas a private citizen identifying as another gender in their private life isn't really. So the Barstool Right is basically a right-wing version of Kennedy's expressive individualism.

Significantly, while the Silicon Valley Right and Barstool Right are recognizably distinct from one another, they are highly reconcilable in as much as both of them tend to be deeply hostile to moralism, administrative bloat, and unaccountable bureaucracies.

What is the world? A place full of opportunity for people willing to put in the work and effort needed to succeed.

What is political society and what is it for? Political society is how a group of people secure each other's access to fair opportunity.

What threatens political society? Moralizers who deprive people of their freedom to pursue their dreams and corrupt administrators and bureaucrats who care more about their own comfort than they do about fairness.

How do you address those threats? Refuse to comply. Be ungovernable. Pursue your goals and if anyone gets in your way, run them over.

Christian Nationalism

For Christian Nationalists, politics and common life are governed by the natural law, which is still easily knowable to us today even after the Fall. Additionally, because nature is so comprehensive, we do not really need grace to aid in governing public life. Nature is sufficient. So political life is not really modified or transformed in any way by specifically Christian teaching.

This means that virtually all the action is wrapped up in what gets defined as being part of the natural order. It also means that their vision of politics is built upon creating political societies that align with the natural order.

Specifically, for the Christian Nationalists authentic political life is found in a kind of "complacent love" one has for ones own grounded in the shared life, culture, and ethnic background of a community. This means that they are, obviously, quite vigorously anti-woke in ways not unlike the Silicon Valley Right and Barstool Right. They also mirror the Silicon Valley Right in that they tend to have a fairly hostile relationship to political liberalism. Their preferred solution is also not that dissimilar, as they favor a kind of strong man system built around a Christian Caesar or a Christian Prince. The Silicon Valley Right has no interest in the Christian piece, of course, but they do very much have their own sort of Caesarist tendencies from Yarvin in particular.

However, once you move past the questions raised by recent progressivism and political liberalism, the divisions begin to emerge quite rapidly. Because of their theory of "nature," the Christian Nationalists have a general hatred of immigration and migration more generally, though that hatred is often applied in rather selective ways. The other two right wing blocs, however, are mostly opposed to forms of immigration which create instability and low-skill migration. But orderly immigration of skilled labor is largely a positive for most in the Silicon Valley and Barstool Right because it facilitates innovation and makes America a formidable competitor on the global stage. Likewise, the Christian Nationalists tend to be patriarchal and even misogynistic with regards to sex and gender while also fiercely condemning anything other than monogamous heterosexual marriage. The other two right wing blocs, obviously, do not share these views. So issues like gay marriage, IVF, surrogacy, and so on will all be clear fissures that divide the Christian Nationalist right from the Barstool Right or Tech Right.

Where this leaves the Christian Nationalists is in a bit of a no-man's land: Their unique approach to nature and grace as well as their anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic tendencies put them firmly at odds with virtually any other meaningful bloc of politically engaged Christians. At the same time, their traditionalism and moralism puts them at odds with the Silicon Valley and Barstool Right. The outcome is that they're left with virtually no power they possess in themselves, but only with whatever scraps the Silicon Valley Right and Barstool Right are willing to throw them.

This can be seen most clearly on the question of abortion. The actual power brokers in the Trumpist right—the Silicon Valley Right and the Barstool Right—do not care about abortion. They are, however, perfectly happy to throw pro-life Christians the occasional bone when it will not cost them anything to do so. For example, they're perfectly content for Vice President Vance to speak at the March for Life. Likewise, it is perfectly fine to pardon a number of unjustly imprisoned pro-life activists.

However, it is enormously unlikely that this Trump administration will take any steps to ban abortion through federal means or to curb access to abortion pills. (I will give them credit for taking this step repudiating the idea of there being such a thing as a human right to abortion. But, even here, it is hard to see how this step actually reduces the number of legal abortions happening in the United States.) Indeed, the stated policy of the Trump-Vance team seems likely to leave an overwhelming majority of abortions in America completely legal. When you combine all that with Trump-Vance team's choice to remove all pro-life language from the 2024 GOP platform, you are left with a GOP that is pro-choice in most of the ways that actually matter—which is precisely what the Barstool and Silicon Valley Right would want, but is at least in theory wildly at odds with the views of Christian conservatives.

So in terms of political substance, the Christians have been entirely routed. But because their votes are still desirable, those who actually have the power are happy to make occasional gestures to appease pro-lifers. Thus the Christians who have adopted the ethnonationalism of the Christian Nationalist movement are likely to find themselves out in the cold: They aren't influential or powerful enough to drive meaningful policy in the Trump administration, but neither are they intellectually reconcilable with the various small-l liberal Christian traditions that have at times exercised such influence in American politics in recent years.

What is the world? A natural order made by God which man is meant to rule and preserve.

What is political society and what is it for? Political society is the bonds that exist between people united by common ways of life, culture, and ethnicity.

What threatens political society? Migration patterns and disloyalty to one's own.

How do you address those threats? Seize political power, and then establish a Christian Caesar that will reward one's friends and punish one's enemies.

Christian Civic Republicanism

Finally, there is another viable option worth considering, though in all likelihood it will be a minority report for the foreseeable future. Indeed, it is difficult to identify it as even being on "the right" necessarily, even if it is clearly "conservative" in many ways.

The problem we have confronted in recent years is that the civic libertarianism preferred by the evangelical intelligentsia and by many Catholics as well in recent decades is simply insufficient for the technological moment we find ourselves in. The canonical piece defining this problem is likely still Jon Askonas's essay in Compact on the failure of conservatism:

What defined modern conservatism was its attempt, against the onslaught of revolutionary ideologies, to set aside foundational questions in order to make common cause in defense of the actually existing human order. But the movement failed because it neglected the true revolutionary principle: technological transformation. Conservatives “lost the culture” not because they lost the battle of ideas, but because they lost the economy. Communists sought to transform society by transforming the organization of the household (the oikonomos, the etymological origin of “economy”)—but in the end, the efforts of political revolutionaries and party apparatchiks paled beside the impact of the Pill and the two-income trap.

When you descend from lofty rhetoric about “Traditions” and “Values,” it becomes apparent that a huge number of the actual practices and social institutions which built those virtues have disintegrated, not because of Progressivism or Socialism but because of the new environment and political economy generated by technology. For decades, sociologists have charted the decline of two-parent families, hobbies, local newspapers, churches, stable employment, women’s clubs, libraries, amateur sports, political rhetoric, neighborhood barbecues, Boy Scouts, small businesses, classical music, credit unions, and on and on. Even studies that catastrophize about the rise of loneliness, fatherlessness, economic precarity, and suicide, miss the bigger picture, which is that the social infrastructure conducive to human flourishing has shifted even for those fortunate enough to piece together a semblance of the average American life 50 years ago. A tradition is at an end when the wisdom of yesteryear no longer obtains.

Christian civic libertarianism was simply inadequate to address the technological problems posed, first, by the Pill and, later, by the emergence of the internet and digital technology.

That said, one needn't adopt a Luddite posture to address these issues, nor does one need to just accommodate oneself to the tech revolution by making common cause with the Silicon Valley Right. There are other options.

Foremost among them is a recovery of an only slightly older tradition of Christian civic republicanism that is able to address the challenges of our moment, but to do so in a distinctly Christian register. It means reaching back to the "liberalism" of John Paul II and Benedict XVI—neither of whom were remotely libertarian, but also were not anti-liberal—as well as the post-war tradition that encompasses figures like J. R. R. Tolkien, Henri De Lubac, Etienne Gilson, and Jacques Maritain from the Roman church and figures like C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Emil Brunner from the Protestant. (Simone Weil would also belong to this broad array of post-war Christian liberals, I think, though in characteristically odd and uneven ways.)

The frame we can use for endorsing this project is a pragmatic, minimalist approach to the question of liberal democracy, regarding democracy not as a political ideology but as a political method. Democracy is simply the method that neighbors living in radically pluralistic societies use to navigate their differences in ways that will not obliterate political society.

One of the problems that the post-liberal right has failed to reckon with seriously is precisely that point: What does one do with radical pluralism? The Silicon Valley Right at least has some form of a solution: the plebes live in designed settlements with sufficient amusements to keep them satiated while the grown-up "innovator" great men do all the important work. It's a repugnant answer, but at least an answer. And it is more than anything we've gotten from post-liberal Christians, so far as I can tell. But if you are repulsed, as you should be, by the anti-democratic tendencies of the far right and desire something better than we've had, then you have to reckon with the reality of extreme pluralism. Christian civic republicanism has an answer here.

How do religious claims work in a pluralist society within a civic republican framework? There is a give-and-take to it, but this is a basic sketch:

On the one hand, contrary to the progressives as well as the civic libertarians, Christian civic republicanism would say that religious claims must absolutely be regarded as acceptable forms of public speech and that religious arguments for public policies are likewise valid and legitimate. Indeed, to suggest otherwise is, as I have said before, to tacitly tell religious believers that liberal democracy is not for them. So if Christian pro-lifers wish to argue for pro-life policies on the basis of Christian beliefs and ideas, they should be allowed to do so.

On the other hand, contrary to the Christian Nationalists, Christian civic republicans must accept that their views are not shared by everyone in their society, that the way policies are established is through argument, persuasion, and then formal legislative process, and that this all means they must be open to compromise and willing to accept that sometimes they will lose a vote. When that happens, their response will not be to ragequit democracy and storm the capitol, but instead  to make better arguments and do additional work to persuade others to your side. And these conditions apply to everyone because in a democratic system everyone is going to lose sometimes. The sine qua non of it all is that all parties agree that when they lose they won't seek to destroy the political method, but will instead try to win next time while using the licit means made available to us within a liberal democracy.

This basic pragmatism is valuable because it allows Christian Civic Republicans to approach questions of political policy in a piecemeal fashion, forming coalitions of different sorts as different issues arise. In seeking to defeat the porn industry, we might seek common cause with certain feminists, for example, who are also opposed to pornography. In seeking to promote paid family leave policies, we might make common cause with pro-worker movements on the left and right.

The point here is that Christian Civic Republicans are not looking for a single meta theory to solve all their political problems, nor do they place all their political hopes in obtaining absolutized political power. Rather, they focus their efforts around the battles that are necessary and winnable and build the coalitions most conducive to victory on the issue at hand. And running in the background, as it were, is a persistent commitment to a broadly egalitarian and personalist ethic that opposes political domination, totalitarianism, and tyranny. 

What is the world? A good creation governed by a natural order, but now also a world marred by sin, which makes it difficult for us to recognize the natural order and to do lasting good in the world.

What is political society and what is it for? Political society exists to insure that the unavoidable social relationships we all rely upon for our lives are mutually beneficial and delightful.

What threatens political society? At root, the great threat is sin. But as it relates to peaceable political life in particular, the greatest threat is forms of sin that tend toward the creation of totalitarian or tyrannical systems that exalt and enrich the few at the expense of the many.

How do you address those threats? Through the practice of democratic virtues that cultivate neighborly live and civic trust and facilitate political organization and common action amongst the people.