Why Postliberalism Failed

Tom and James interview Joel Berry, Managing Editor of the Christian satire website Babylon Bee, about his experiences dealing with postliberalism and Christian Nationalism on the Protestant side of American politics. We also talk about the dance between being funny and being political and also a bit on the Parable of the Sower as relevant to the politics of the monent.

James and Tom talk about Father Josef Tiso, who was dictator of Slovakia during the Second World War. During those years, Slovakia was a client state of the Third Reich, and Tiso was a wily, ambitious Catholic priest who saw to the deaths of between 50,000 - 95,000 Jews until his hanging in 1946. Afterwards, Slovakia, like Croatia, managed to endure the worst of both worlds, first fascism and then communism.

After edgy social media poaster Pinesap debated the virtues of Francisco Franco in a debate with Mehdi Hasan, Franco Appreciation Content resurfaced. When Tom and James remarked on Franco's atrocities, we were once again visited with spurious claims about Franco's virtues as a pious Catholic leader who restored Spain. He was nothing of the sort, as Tom and James detail.

We review some of the major developments since we wrapped recording our first season. We cover the election of noted postliberal JD Vance to the Vice Presidency, the likely ouster of Viktor Orbán, the papacy of Pope Leo XIV, and other developments.

Tom and James speak with Dr. H. David Baer (Texas Lutheran) about Englebert Dolfuss and the rise of Austrofascism of the 1930s and its influence on contemporary postliberals. They then pivot to discussing the centralized of Viktor Orbán to postliberal ideas and institutions.

A recent episode of The Remnant featured its host, Jonah Goldberg, discussing contemporary political Catholicism with George Weigel. Weigel dismissed postliberalism and integralism as primarily "online" and hence marginal. Weigel reveals his age by dismissing online media as though it were not the primary source for young people to learn about the world. We discuss that more here.

James talks about the misconceptions around the heresy of "Americanism" and how Ven. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen repurposed the term to defend a form of Catholic Republicanism. Tom patiently listens, as James clearly is way, way too interested in Sheen while, at the same time, regularly forgets names.

Today, James and Tom talk about the rhetorical role the still critically dead Spanish authoritarian Francisco Franco plays in contemporary postliberal discourse. Then, Tom's computer dies, and he had to record the ending by himself with the inclusion of possible copyright violations that will probably get this channel permanently demonetized.

In today's episode, we spend some time talking to Dr. Dawn Eden Goldstein about American Jesuit priest Father Louis J. Twomey and his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. We also speak to her about Father Edward Dowling, another American Jesuits who dedicated his life to people with addictions, troubled marriages, and nervous disorders. Their examples provide an alternative vision for Catholicism in America that serves the stated ends of postliberalism but without all of the weird baggage.

In this week's episode, James talks about another example of a postliberal party that failed to secure a position within in government, the Brazilian Integralist Action Party. Plínio Salgado founded the party after a wealthy friend sponsored him to meet with Benito Mussolini in 1930. Salgado followed Mussolini's advice and created the Catholic authoritarian party in 1932 but ultimately could not exercise sufficient influence over the factions in the authoritarian regime of Getúlio Vargas.

This episode focuses on Tom's work on political economy and the constitutionalism (or lack thereof) found in the work of Adrian Vermeule. This episode ends a little abruptly because Tom's phone died. We run a very professional operation.

We talk to Kevin Vallier about how postliberals cannot evade association with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the arguments against integralism in Kevin's fine book All the Kingdoms of the World (available where fine books are sold), and the postliberalism of Republican 2024 VP nominee JD Vance.