Kevin Vallier
@kvallier
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Political philosopher. Wannabe political theologian and political economist. Incurably affable. Author, All the Kingdoms of the World. (order at the bio link)
Bowling Green, OH
Joined November 2008
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My new book, All the Kingdoms of the World, comes out Sept 1st. It is a brand-new assessment of Catholic integralism and other religious anti-liberalisms. I am so excited to share it with you. Please retweet to spread the word!
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I’m still amazed that the anti-euthanasia people were 100% correct about the slippery slope to mass death. Canada is in a mass suicide crisis. All that their PM will do is offer them a helpline. Watching this unfold is changing my policy views a lot.
As of today, Canada’s new suicide crisis and emotional distress helpline is available across the country. If you need help or know someone who does, you can reach out to 9-8-8 by phone and text, in English and French, at any time of day and any day of the week.
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I have officially defined neoliberalism as a philosophical doctrine. Please RT to get me in as much trouble as possible.
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Where did atheism discourse go? I feel like no one cares if you're religious anymore if you have the right politics.
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This exchange perfectly contrasts the new right with traditional American conservatives. The new right mocks its predecessors (to defend an authoritarian ruler). The conservative answers calmly. The new right ignores the challenge to focus on political success.
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To those who defend Rawls, I criticize him. To those who criticize Rawls, I defend him. Is there a philosopher you approach similarly?
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Hindu Nationalists are distinct from all the other illiberal movements I've studied because they're committed to winning elections. Their policies, and even their views, get shaped by Indian voters. This is probably why they're easily the strongest illiberal movement worldwide.
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ANALYTIC POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY TODAY 🧵
I see analytic political philosophy growing into three communities. /1
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@DrJayRichards
The abortion issue takes the mask off a lot of people. I’m similarly stunned.
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Uber driver has a socialist podcast on blast.
Podcast host: “Fascists are bad at art.”
Me, for no reason: “Well actually that’s not true.”
Driver: <silence>
Me: “I mean, fascism is bad, of course.”
Driver: <silence>
Me: “Thanks for the ride!”
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I am pleased to announce that my Provost has recommended me for promotion to Full Professor.
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Whatever positive reputation the LP had, it is now a smoking pile of rubble.
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Me: tweets on illiberal Catholicism, Islam, and Confucianism for years.
Twitter: mostly helpful reflections.
Me: tweets once on Hindu Nationalism.
Twitter: Hindu nationalist ratio time.
This is the most ratioed I’ve ever been and it is *fascinating*.
Hindu Nationalists are distinct from all the other illiberal movements I've studied because they're committed to winning elections. Their policies, and even their views, get shaped by Indian voters. This is probably why they're easily the strongest illiberal movement worldwide.
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@DrCarolHay
@byrne_a
I was at the session and that isn’t what Byrne argued. I usually avoid all these debates on Twitter, but in this case, I’d simply add my testimony that this is a distortion of what Byrne said.
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I'm delighted to announce the publication of Public Reason and Diversity, a book of Jerry Gaus's most important essays. I'm grateful to Cambridge UP Philosophy and
@GaskinHilary
for the opportunity to bring these essays together in one place. Table of Contents below.
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Today is the official launch date for All the Kingdoms of the World. People are getting their books. Reviews are coming. The book has sold out from Oxford's website, but you can get the book from Amazon. I'm as excited as ever. Please share the word!
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Ugh, all the hate for these boys. I dressed like this for years. It is just how boys dress in much of the south. These guys will vote for Trump in part because they know they’re the object of scorn among all the people insulting and mocking them here.
How do these guys vote in 2024? what’s the breakdown
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I’m delighted to announce that I have won the biennial Sanders Prize in the philosophy of religion. You can read more about the prize and my paper on the Daily Nous.
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My book, All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism, is now in production at Oxford University Press.
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Let’s see. Liberal societies are less coercive than...
Slave societies: ✅
Patriarchal societies: ✅
Communist societies: ✅
Fascist societies: ✅
Vermeule’s ideal: ✅
What am I missing?
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Liberalism: a tradition of political thought that stresses freedom, equality, toleration, and the harmony of human interests. /1
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Gamestopgate is teaching the left what libertarians never could: corporations hate markets.
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The great economists have preferred liberalism to both socialism and conservatism. Why?
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Why do people *hate* Rawls? I understand strongly disagreeing with him and thinking he has undue influence. But why do some people despise him so viscerally?
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I’m genuinely puzzled by atheists who think there’s *zero* evidence for theism. There’s not one feature of reality that makes even slightly more sense on theism than atheism?
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Gerald Gaus was my dissertation advisor and my friend. I believe he was the greatest political philosopher alive. I will have more to say about his life and work in the future. Right now, I just wanted people to know he is no longer with us.
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I’ve grown impatient with libertarians who postulate illusory conflicts between democracy and freedom. Democracy expresses individual freedom and democracies are the most effective protectors of individual rights.
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I'm delighted that
@WSJ
has published my Review essay on the decline in American social trust. Why is the U.S. the only established democracy where social trust is falling? I think political polarization is a big part of the answer.
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A great read so far. One interesting claim is that liberalism’s main fear in the 21st century is populism. Kahan also argues that liberals haven’t figured out how to respond to populism yet. He’s right we don’t know how to respond.
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In the 1979 Game of Life, if you lose, you become … a philosopher.
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If someone tells you “liberalism” has a false “philosophical anthropology,” they’re almost certainly wrong. Liberals have held every major metaphysical view (from materialism to idealism) and have diverse theories of human nature (contrast Locke, Green, and Hayek).
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In general, I’m not sympathetic to slippery slope arguments. But the anti-euthanasia people were perhaps right about the slippery slope they’ve postulated.
Canada will legalize medically assisted dying for people addicted to drugs next spring.
Some drug user activists are calling it "eugenics" and say Canada should be paying for better harm reduction practices:
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In general, I don’t think your politics indicates whether you’re a good person or not. Political reasoning is hard and it is easy to be wrong.
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@RichardHanania
Maybe conservatives shouldn’t be eager to court those who are “very pro aborting Down syndrome babies.”
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When my teacher, Jerry Gaus, died unexpectedly in 2020, I wrote an article that summarized his project. Now the piece is out with the Journal of APA. I think the article helps people get Gaus’s project. It is open access too.
I put heart into this one.
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Last night’s lecture for
@RGCS_McGill
was a highlight of my career. We had a full house and intense interest. Best of all: Charles Taylor came! One of the great living philosophers and 91 years old. We even spoke one on one. What an honor. I will always this day with joy.
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Liberals have feared imminent loss on and off for a long time. The 20th century had a number of liberals worried about its collapse. Schumpeter and Hayek are examples. But then liberalism recovers. Liberalism is the most flexible of the great ideologies. You can never count it
Even liberalism's most ardent supporters are preparing for its imminent failure
We are in a post-liberal society and everyone is scrambling for control of what that means
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Wow, everyone was nice about my neoliberalism entry! On Twitter!
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Suppose I could produce a fairly high level free webcourse on Hayek’s thought. Lecturers would discuss familiar and less familiar work (like The Sensory Order). Anyone could get knee-deep in Hayek’s ideas through accessible formats. Would that be worthwhile?
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This thread is *so* wrong about Locke. Locke thought (a) humans were made to know God, (b) natural laws were objective divine commands, (c) liberty is not license, and (d) social contracts arise from natural law (not unlike Suarez). Postliberals misrepresenting liberals again.
Who should we blame?
Many of our words have been gutted of meaning: man, woman, love, marriage, etc.
While many blame “the left,” it was actually “the right,” the “conservatives,” who taught the left this game.
They change your grammar to change your logic.
Let’s look ⬇️
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My six year old’s birthday is today and she wanted me to share this DALL-E picture she designed. She wants to see if she gets some likes, so you know what to do!
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Yes, libertarians that destroy organizations they promised to reform, that attack vaccines, that celebrate racist intellectuals, that defend immigration restrictions, and that suffuse the movement with cruelty.
Is there anything more pathetic than regime libertarians? ‘The libertarian case for Fauci’ -coming soon from Cato.
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Which historical philosophers have the most annoying followers?
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This is silly. Vermeule apologized for the election tweet and, from what I can tell, bears no animus towards LGBT people. His expertise on Chevron is invaluable, so his voice has great value in the public square on the matter. Criticize Vermeule all day, but not like this.
It’s incredibly disappointing that so many law professors on here still cite and celebrate Adrian Vermeule, a 2020 election denier and vicious homophobe who openly despises LGBTQ people. Must be nice that he doesn’t want to erase your family, but we don’t all have that privilege.
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Tempted to start doing YouTube rants like “Top 10 Objections to Liberalism DESTROYED.” With extremely low production values, of course.
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@CatholicClod
“Instead of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!”
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I have said it before and will say it again: Christians, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is not a Christian hymn! Read the lyrics in full, please.
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American integralism has collapsed. Today,
@thedispatch
, I explain why this happened and what mainline conservatives can learn from it.
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Vox on Deneen: “What is arguably the book’s most important claim — that liberalism is beset by an insuperable tension between a conservative mass public and an insular liberal elite — is never established with a single empirical study or even a simple piece of polling data.”
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For the past few weeks, I've listened to young Christian intellectuals with grave reservations about liberalism. They are genuinely afraid of the elite left. And they were *so grateful* simply to be heard. They feel no tenured professors will take them seriously. I've felt moved.
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Who is the paradigm philosopher in each political tradition? Understand each tradition as you will. I'm looking for a range of responses.
Liberal:
Socialist:
Conservative:
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The New Right ethos in a nutshell: the embrace of power. Yet what are the moral limits on exercising such power? I have not yet seen a compelling answer.
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The liberal tradition does not rest on a single theory of human nature. You cannot defeat liberalism with metaphysics.
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This excellent textbook teaches undergraduate students how to evaluate the case for and against markets. Clearly written, funny, fair, and comprehensive without being overlong. Authors Daniel Halliday and John Thrasher did a great job.
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The first review of All the Kingdoms of the World is in. Tyler Cowen is extremely positive.
"It is likely to be one of this year’s books that turns out really to matter."
Thanks,
@tylercowen
!
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AV and I are lecturing at McGill University on the same day, and back to back. What a glorious coincidence. Liberalism and post-liberalism all in one evening!
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To understand many anti-liberals, replace "common good" with "total political victory." Ex. "We should ban CRT for the sake of the common good." becomes "We should ban CRT for the sake of total political victory." An illuminating, if not consistently accurate, heuristic.
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A massive policy change in Ohio. Our family can now readily afford to send our three children to a range of private schools. Today, Ohio families gained new educational freedom. Happy Fourth of July!
There it is. Universal School Choice is now the law of the land on
#IndependenceDay
Biggest increase in edchoice eligibility, public education funding, and charter school funding equity in Ohio history!
#winning
@DeAngelisCorey
@SchoolChoiceNow
@SchoolChoiceOH
@ExcelinEd
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Postliberals and neo-reactionaries are right that societies have elites. But they falsely assume American elites are united against the populace. US elites are, in fact, highly polarized. Many of our national problems come from intra-elite conflict.
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One day I want to teach a grad seminar on what I call the “Middle Liberals,” liberals between Mill’s death and the publication of A Theory of Justice. Green, Sidgwick, Dewey, Hobhouse, first wave liberal feminists, etc. Rawls led us to omit these liberals from the canon.
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Oxford UP answers petitions insinuating that they acted improperly in publishing Holly Lawford-Smith’s new book, Gender Critical Feminism. It politely and professionally gives not one inch. Fabulous.
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I'm reading about Christian involvement in fascist movements in the 1920s and 30s. A lot of people had disturbingly nuanced views about the Nazis. It's like, "Yeah, the forced sterilizations are bad, but Hitler is getting the economy back on track, so he's a mixed bag."
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People are dunking on Ahmari for changing his political views again. But don’t miss its broader significance. Leading Catholic postliberals seem to have gone their separate ways. For years on Twitter (2017-22), they acted as unified faction. No longer.
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@MushtaqBilalPhD
ChatGPT is helping me uncover objections to my arguments. About 10% of the time it offers objections worth answering, so long as I am very precise. I’m working on a paper on divine and democratic political authority that is going to be much better thanks to ChatGPT.
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Morning reading, evening Twitter. Did I somehow magically summon you guys?!
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The Papal States maintained oppressive Jewish ghettoes until Italian unification forces shut them down in the mid-19th century. The Roman ghetto lasted until 1870. Maybe let’s not pine for these regimes.
One of the tragedies of the loss of the Papal States is that the “do something” impulses of the popes and Curia have been re-directed to tinkering with matters of doctrine and liturgy. Time perhaps better spent building roads in Umbria or setting tariff policy for Ancona.
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I’m a bad tourist. I often prefer to do work when I’m away. With one exception: church. My first Oxford-Grade Evensong.
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The last twelve hours have been ridiculous. A dinner was held in honor of the book, after which I fell asleep in my massive guest suite … in a castle. This morning I woke up to the sound of a perfectly harmonized boys’ choir practicing.
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OK, philosophy journals, I get it, you don't want to publish any articles on integralism. It is "off-topic" even if Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau all thought engaging it was central to political philosophy. I understand.
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Note to self: never do controversial Aquinas exegesis unless you are prepared for every Thomist in the world to simultaneously challenge you to a duel.
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Postliberalism continues to decline.
@compactmag_
is the chief popular outlet for postliberal ideas and the only high-circulation magazine with two postliberals as chief editors. The exposure of Nina Power's apparent sympathy for fascism will reduce its influence.
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A sign of a bad book: when an author cannot define their opponent’s position without insulting it.
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2. The New Social Philosophers: philosophers who explore questions in the philosophy of race, feminism, etc. They rely on analytic metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. Topics include the idea of misogyny, the metaphysics of gender, etc. /3
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3. PPEists: philosophers that ask social scientific questions and employ social science methods. Topics include sustaining social cooperation, using diversity to improve institutions, the place of modeling in normative reasoning, political epistemology, etc. /4
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This SCOTUS term has been a disaster for Vermeule's constitutional agenda. Dobbs eviscerated demand for common good constitutionalism, and now the EPA case hacks away at the administrative state.
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1. The Classicals: philosophers answering questions set up several decades ago by figures like Rawls, Dworkin, and Nozick. Topics include the theory of justice (especially economic justice), theories of rights, legitimacy, etc. /2
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Off to serve as a Liberty Fund discussion leader. We’re talking about the idea of social justice, with readings from both Hayek and Rawls. I must resist my urge to tell people to synthesize them.
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After reading many liberals this term, I am stunned by how much Rawls focused liberal thought on justice. Not that earlier liberals didn’t care about justice, but they care about many other things too, such as the public good, the good life, and social discovery.
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Off to England and my first visit to Oxford. I will speak at Christ Church on June 6th. On June 7th, I'm delighted to announce, I'll participate in a one-day conference on my book!
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@tonyannett
The feeling that liberal order has betrayed the Church’s goodwill on moral issues. The state was supposed to not take sides on, say, LGBT issues. Many now think this bias was built into any liberal order from the start. And as young people, they want a radical alternative.
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HOW I BECAME A PUBLIC REASON LIBERAL - RUNNING SCREAMING FROM HOPPE 🧵
When I was a libertarian undergrad, I read this passage from Hans Herrmann-Hoppe. He is rightly criticized for the outlined portion. But the prior sentences influenced me in a big way. /1
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Time for page proofing. I'm so proud of the book. We're going to have some serious fun.
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Simply bizarre tweet. Hayek won the Nobel, published reams of fascinating books, and explained in a way most people now accept why central planning doesn’t work.
Milton Friedman was a libertarian ideologue, but he made major contributions to economics. I’m thinking of the permanent income hypothesis, the expectations-augmented Phillips Curve, and even his monetary history.
Contrast this with Hayek, who made no real contributions. All he
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Making the common good your political theory's master moral value solves almost no interesting moral problems.
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I just gave the final lecture for my graduate seminar, Liberalism: The Crash Course. So many thoughts. But when you read: Locke, Smith, Constant, Mill, Taylor, Douglass, Green, Hobhouse, Dewey, Berlin, Shklar, Hayek, Rawls, King, Nussbaum, and Okin, that’s what happens.
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One feature of the liberal tradition is that it postulates fewer necessary social conflicts than conservatism or socialism. The idea of a harmony of interests is, in my view, central to liberalism.
'Liberalism - the right way' — British poster published by the Liberal Party ahead of the 1924 general election.
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Political philosophers have over-invested in intra-liberal debates. We need to talk to young non-liberals.
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Everyone, I have to come clean. I'm an integralist now. The arguments were just too strong. Liberalism is a sin. Error has no rights. There is no neutrality. Pius IX did nothing wrong.
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Today I had the privilege of talking with Russ Hittinger about Aquinas, Leo XIII, and integralism. For those who don’t know, Hittinger is one of the world’s leading minds on Catholicism and religious liberty. I’ll remember our conversation fondly for many years to come.
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My view is that the American right is undergoing a rapid, often unnoticed, de-Christianization. It makes sense for them to integrate the New Atheists into the coalition. And it makes sense that Trump could integrate prosperity gospel preachers without much trouble.
After New Atheism cringed itself to death all they had to do was spend a few years saying "boys have a penis" and conservatives opened the gates and welcomed them in
Now the same militant atheists show up to conservative conferences to warn about the dangers of Christians who
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Idea: Hayek’s best work is Rules and Order. It came out in 1973. Someone should hold a 50th anniversary conference on that book in 2023.
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Preparing to teach liberal political thought after spending so much time with religious anti-liberal political thought is really jarring. I still love liberalism, but my brain now suggests all kinds of anti-liberal counterarguments.
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Maybe my next book should be “Neoliberalism is Good, Actually.” I’d team up with an economist and we’d write a Piketty-length book working through the philosophical, political, and economic dimensions of the view. (By neoliberalism I mean this: )
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Welcome new followers! I’m a political philosopher. Until recently, my work has been on developing a liberal political theory friendly to religious belief and diversity of opinion. So I tweet on liberalism and its critics. /1
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