Why Postliberalism Failed | Interview: James M. Patterson and Thomas D. Howes

Ajouté : 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Greetings your listeners. This is Jonah Goldberg, host of the Remnant podcast brought to you by the Dispatch and Dispatch Media. We are on a just a just a rampage of books about liberalism, post-liberalism, anti-liberalism.

[00:00:18]Uh we just this week we even we even had a Canadian on this week. Um although I don't know when this is going to air.

[00:00:26]So, uh, maybe maybe there'll be a hiatus where we talk about something other than all this before this airs. Or maybe not.

[00:00:31]I can't make you promise. I am simply a servant to, um, Victoria. Um, but, uh, very excited. Been waiting a long time for this book to come out, and it's still not out yet, but you can pre-order on Amazon. I have. Um, it is the pithily titled Why Post Liberalism Failed by James Patterson and Thomas Hows. Um, and uh, for context, James Patterson is an associate professor of public affairs at the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee. He's also contributing editor at Law and Liberty.

[00:01:06]Thomas Hows, uh, some of you guys may know him. Um, you might recall I recently went on the Reagan Caucus podcast and he is the, um, I don't know, the Soncho Panza to, uh, John Dailyaly, um, at over there. And, um, he's also a lecturer at Princeton. So, you know, he's got something like a day job and um he also uh runs uh outfit the vital center magazine and um they both have written this book that is due out uh like like for for a select audience of people waiting for this book to come out has been like waiting for GDAU. Um but um we are going to talk to these guys regardless and it's it's it's it's their fa fault for being late in producing the book.

[00:01:52]um and and not mine because how can it be mine? So anyway, James and Tom, uh James and Thomas, uh welcome to The Remnant. And as you guys know, uh first question out of the box is what's your book about.

[00:02:06]>> Well, uh thank you so much for having us on. I should clarify for the readers that, uh listeners, rather, uh that if they're if they've been waiting, it's my fault, not Tom's. Uh I was the one late delivering uh the chapters. Uh the the book is about uh post-lberalism as it was understood a few years ago. the term kind of has expanded as you know to mean you know maybe like the new right or nationalists uh more broadly but for us post-liberalism started as a as a cadre of Catholic uh political thinkers that were associated with the new right um and before they were called postliberals they were called integralists and for maybe reasons we can get into later that they kind of shed that label u but they have um articulated ideas of Catholic political philosophy that are very at odds with historically American Catholic ideas and American ideas more generally.

[00:03:01]And so we set out to write a book that uh argued against them. And one of the chief arguments we make is that post-liberalism is not new. It feels new uh to especially younger readers, but it's actually very old. And not only is it old, it's bad. Uh and uh one of the reasons why we get so many uh um variations of Catholic political philosophy opposed to it after the after the second world war is because of how many of the regimes that were Catholic or Catholic name at least uh tried to adopt these old uh these old ideas and ended up becoming like Nazi collaborator states or right-wing authoritarian states. And then we explain how the contemporary political position of the church actually rejects so many of their ideas. Um and uh you got anything to add, Tom?

[00:03:50]>> Well, we should just clarify because we get um critique for this. Um there was a a a sort of strand of Protestant post-lberalism >> that from the 1990s. Uh I just called the '9s, I guess. I'm sorry. I already started calling the 1990s. It wasn't from the 1890s, but it was 19. Um the uh and we our book has nothing to do with them. They they they don't really have much interest in practical politics. So we just leave them alone and we're focused on our own team here and the ones that are strategizing how to create a political movement, not just theorize about politics. So >> I feel bad for those guys because they got their name stolen.

[00:04:29]>> Yeah, that's true.

[00:04:30]>> Well, that that that happens a lot. Your point about post-lberalism not being new um sort of reminds me of how paleoconservatism wasn't old, right? I mean there a lot lot lot a lot of these names have tells inside of them about what they're trying to claim you know to steal a base without you know but um and also so like you know I'm a national former national review guy >> national review you know there was this big split between El Brent Bozel senior >> and Buckley where Bozelle moved to Spain to launch literally a post-liberal intergalist Catholic magazine called Triumph >> and the number of post-lberal Catholics that I met or exchanged with who had no idea that like this wasn't something invented by their cadre was was really kind of fascinating to me. We should also just say um the title of your book is not subtle >> um in so far as it is a it's pinging off of Patrick Denin's book why liberalism failed. You guys are saying okontr post liberalism, right? There you go.

[00:05:43]>> Um, all right. So, like first of all, let's just do a little definitional um brush clearing here, right?

[00:05:53]>> Um, is there a meaningful difference between post-lberalism and anti-liberalism?

[00:06:02]>> I think so. Uh, and anti-liberalism is merely designating what it's opposed to.

[00:06:09]So, you could be an anti-liberal and not necessarily be uh a post-lberal, but all post-lberals are are anti-liberal. The term post-lberal implies uh very obviously that liberalism is something that is transitional to whatever it is that they are affirming.

[00:06:27]Uh, and so they have an historical view of the development of regimes or of politics. And that's uh part of the name change that's very frustrating is that Catholic intergalists as they used to be called uh would have a more obvious case to make for what they want whereas postliberals are describing what we're leaving. Uh and so it's much more of an emphasis on critique than it is on the positive. And this is um something we talk about uh pretty extensively in the book. uh but there are anti-liberals um and um uh that are sort of associated with post-lberals. They don't necessarily share this sort of teological history uh that you see uh in in their view. And what post-lberalism is is this kind of arrival, this moment at which uh people would come to consciousness of their own boundedness by liberalism, their alienation or their uh you know to use a Marxist term or whatever. uh that will then like raise them up uh in their intellect and cause them to rebel against the liberal institutions like you know capitalism and uh and uh and banks and um liberal universities and the like and and embrace the future and then when you ask them what that is they kind of get a little hedging because you know Catholicism is is kind of a lot you know it's uh the idea of the the papacy having indirect power over regimes and they're like, "Oh, that's what >> Yeah. So, um, so another definitional thing, what is integralism and why do the post-lberal Catholic intellectuals no longer use it as a as a descriptor?"

[00:08:18]>> Go ahead, Tom.

[00:08:19]>> Oh, well, I was going to say, >> why are the why are the post liberals postal? So, so um I would say that the core of the post liberals are integralists, but there are some outliers that don't fully buy into antalism like uh Patrick Dening claims he's not an integralist. What they do share in common though is >> well what is integralism?

[00:08:40]>> But integralism yes integralism is the hardcore post liberalism. It's um it it comes out of it comes out of a certain view of papal authority um that's in the Catholic Church. where the papal authority has uh the pope has indirect power over polit politics. You you see it like a the hardcore presentation of it is Bonafice VI in 1308 and he says that uh uh how does he word it uh uh James that um the pope has uh in >> so universal political jurisdiction right basically all of Europe is the popes >> yes yeah that's right that's right so so um so they get their now there's a softer form of it that develops with thinkers like uh Suarez and and uh and Bellerine. Um that softens it a bit to say it they don't have actual have tempor temporal authority over these different places but they have an indirect temporal authority you know by reason of sin so that they can um direct matters in so far as it pertains to the mission of the church. Um so it would legitimize things like uh some civic punishments for apostates and heretics.

[00:09:57]Right >> now >> there are some Catholic thinkers like Jacqu meritine who believe there's an indirect authority but don't think that it it it can be justifiably used in that way like that what I mentioned about punishing heretics or apostates or whatever. It it might be used in a more subtle way like uh Joe Biden uh you've left the faith with by affirming this thing uh you are now excommunicated yourself that is like an indirect authority right um >> but that that's consistent with having liberal democracy that that kind of indirect authority now that's the one that more people like Jacques Meritane or them will will affirm so integralists aren't just affirming the indirect authority they're saying that it's an ideal situation to have a Catholic state which is empowered by the pope's indirect authority to uh regulate religious affairs. Um and that's an ideal those were the that's what the innerists say and of the post liberals the core ones the innerists are like Adrien Vermule and Gladen Papen and uh Chad Pekcnode and am I missing anyone James?

[00:11:11]Uh uh there would be um Edund Volstein.

[00:11:14]>> Ed Volstein. Yep. Yep. Exactly. So like >> Yeah. These are all household names.

[00:11:18]They're >> all very familiar.

[00:11:21]>> Yeah.

[00:11:22]>> We were warned not to go too deep on this stuff.

[00:11:24]>> Well, no. It's not that I don't mind going deep. It's just like, you know, it's very easy when you've spent a lot of time in this stuff to think that like >> Absolutely. That's right. like like um I remember when I first started at National Review um like just being in this place where these names that you know were so big to me and some of the people were still working there and all that kind of William Buckley was still there and all that kind of stuff and someone said to me you know you got to keep in mind >> there's a magazine in America dedicated to twisted barbwire art that has four times the subscribers that National Review does. And it's a big country with people with a lot of different interests and like >> like Adrian Vermile, famous law professor well in circum circles famous law professor at at Harvard University at Harvard Howard Law School.

[00:12:14]>> Um former Bush administration DOJ guy. um uh strange dude um I think we can say and he is sort of the point man um among he's the I think he's the he's the most well-known other than Denine who's a professor at uh Notre Dame um formerly Georgetown where I've known >> for a long time um >> uh and for listeners who just know he we'll put it in the show notes Adrian Vermule wrote a piece for the Atlantic a few years ago >> that her own Sarah Isgar was sure was parody when she first started reading it. And basically it was a very and I say this with love. I love Catholics, married a Catholic, worked it around Catholics all my life.

[00:13:10]It was um the sort of >> intense popery version of the living constitution. And um um and anyway, so he's this is what this crowd goes and I guess the problem I have is is where does this like I brought this up a bunch of times on this podcast. I don't know where Sora is now on his journey, Sorbamari, but at one point he was a big post-liberal guy.

[00:13:38]Now, I think he's adopted and I want credit for it. I want royalties because I was said, "Oh, these guys are just um pro-life new dealers." And I think that's what he kind of describes himself as now, right?

[00:13:51]>> But there was a there was a time when >> um Sorb was talking about using the medical pharmarmac ph you know industrial complex and the populist upheaval against it. um as a as a battering ram to uh bring in an aristoilian state dedicated to a post-lberal integralist arisatilian state dedicated to the highest good. And I know I bring it up a million times on here, but I just always love the image of Sora, like a 19th century Russian intellectual, going to the people, going to the peasants and explaining what the ultimate goal here was is like uh going to like Sturgis and explaining to a bikers for Trump >> chapter, >> okay, what we're going to do is we're going to use your energy and then we're going to like ban porn >> and um maybe we'll will will have neocabitarian policies, you know, so you can't ride your bikes on Sunday, you know, whatever it is.

[00:14:55]>> And I guess my problem is is like where did these guys get the impression >> that they um were a serious movement that was going to change politics? Like where where where what what is the sort of leaping the canyon in two jumps >> part of their thinking that that that gets them there? because it's a very underpants gnome kind of political project and I just don't get how they convinced themselves that they could get to this arisatilian you know ultra montaine >> integral histo contribution of the book for people that are sort of knowledgeable of the issue generally like they've heard of it and they know about it because this is the most common rejection rejection of post-lberalism they would hear uh that is Vermule and uh Peknel and the like is like this is extremely unpopular. How on earth do you expect to see anyone vote for this? And the answer actually comes from Vermule. So it's good that you you sort of highlighted him there. He's got two articles where he talks about this in particular. One's at um uh integralist sort of hub called the Josiah called uh rally mall two kinds and the other is on political imagination at their substack the post-lberal order and what he describes is uh uh a rebellion of the elites. It's almost like a coup where what instead of doing the kind of party sort of big uh democratic organizational work because they know what they're doing isn't popular. What you do instead is you form elites.

[00:16:36]>> Uh and the idea here is that the people will choose what the elites present to them. And so if you can control the formation of elites, then you can control what the people will choose. So the elites they have in mind are the ones who are going through HLS or Harvard Law School. They're going through Notre Dame. They're going to Catholic University where Chad is working, Chad Pecnold. Uh and they're also forming institutions in Washington that sort of filter Catholics through them, right? Like uh I know uh Chad Peknold's doing something with the dascese of um of Arlington right now uh to bring people through and there's all these little sort of more more informal sort of networks that congregate these people together and give them ideas of post-liberalism uh which then goes into the hiring process. Right? So they're very connected to American moment which is a kind of new right sort of talent uh scouting operation and uh and then they end up like in the state department like Sam Samson who wrote the um the infamous sort of substack of western civilization. Do you remember this? Um >> vaguely.

[00:17:42]>> Yeah. Sam Samson.

[00:17:43]>> Yeah. There was a substack about aligning with our historical allies in in Christianity.

[00:17:50]>> Oh right.

[00:17:50]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and so like it's a it's not that that was a sensational event that you know everyone should take notice of. It just points out how they're already metriculating their way up through the ranks of people that have worked in the White House who will then be natural appointees for later uh operations. And there's a a line that uh Vermule likes to use from Joseph Demise's um reflections on the French Revolution um about how the revolution will get so bad it will take like three or four people to reintroduce the king and the people will rejoice and that's how they imagine themselves. They're one of the three or four people. So that they only they don't need to be large in number because they'll have shaped the public opinion uh through indirectly through elites uh being ready to be chosen when the people exhausted of their liberal revolution.

[00:18:38]>> Mhm. So, so one thing that you'll see that they consistently do, even their forebears, is um well, they don't really they ideologically they're kind of like Carl Schmidt. They don't they really want a sovereign.

[00:18:51]>> Carl Schmidt, Nazi philosopher, crown crown jurist of the third.

[00:18:55]>> That's right. That's right. Who >> who has two really interesting ideas that get blown up into like how he's a super genius. Anyway, >> no. You're with you're you're in good hands with us. We we agree entirely. But Carl Carl Schmidt thought I mean this is one reason he he embraced Catholicism because he thought Catholic politics should mirror the relationship between God and the church, right? That the the the sovereign should be like God to the temporal authority, right? And they um so although he did he believed in voting I guess he was he wasn't fully like domestic and those guys but um uh he he wanted like somebody who was in charge who was a sovereign who could have and then we could say that this is the authority right >> now these guys all want a a strong guy they all want a sovereign right and if it as extension of sovereign they want a elite bureaucracy that's given at least as the Vermule camp. The Vermule camp wants the bureaucracy to have basically universal difference at least from the courts, right? The only thing that can you know control them is this the the executive who's like for him the sovereign, right? All these guys their strategy has always been uh cooperate with these um the strongman movement to consolidate power into one small group, right? or either one person or one small group and then hope that you get the right people in charge, you know, try to work your way to be in charge of that group, right? Um they worked with Victor Orban very closely. Um they seem to work with Kevin Roberts. um they they were open about um trying to uh rec recruit loyalists into the Trump administration and into the federal government >> and >> especially into JD Vance's office.

[00:20:52]>> And when we say work for when we say work with Orban, we should say work for >> Latin Pen and Phil Pilington.

[00:20:59]>> Yeah, that's right. But you notice though, it's already I mean when I don't know what exactly their loyalty oaths were, but they probably included that you deny the results of the 2020 election and things like that.

[00:21:10]>> Um we saw with uh uh what's his name? uh uh who Rod Dreer came came to the US after this scandal with Tucker Carlson and the Heritage Foundation and he was talking to people in DC and he was saying about half the conservative staffers in DC or big Carl Schmidt or no no big uh Nick Fuentes guys and I was like >> I bet you that happened cuz they were having these loyalty tests and of the the population of young kids who were willing to say that they deny the 2020 election and they like Carl Schmidt and all these those ones are like probably 70% of them are Nick Fuentes watchers, right?

[00:21:48]>> So, >> all right. So, all right. So, let's So, like some of this I I kind of agree. I I think Dreer's number we're were high but like directionally it's still disturbing, right? But um it kind of reminds me like there's this famous maybe it's apocryphal, I don't know. But um story about how Richard Nixon was asked whether he believed that >> overpopulation was a huge problem and the population bomb was something to worry about. And he said, "Well, of course." I mean, look, everywhere I go, I see huge crowds.

[00:22:24]>> You know, maybe that's cuz you're president of the United States, right?

[00:22:27]It's like Ted Cruz when uh he was campaign doing the whole shutdown thing in 2013. He would say, "Look, I was I remember seeing him say this where he was, look, I was just in Plano, Texas talking to a Tea Party chapter and everybody in that room wanted Obamacare repealed."

[00:22:47]>> It's like, well, yeah, cuz they're in that room, right? So, like if you f there's a selection bias problem, right?

[00:22:54]is like in Washington right now there are a bunch of jabronies who if you if you if one of your your your filters is are you willing to lie are you willing to say that the 2020 election was stolen >> it's not necessarily you're going to get blind loyalty loyalists you also might get liars >> idiots um or very very very cynical people who are gaming or people who you know like or true believers right I mean it's like but the people who go through make it through that funnel are going to be a very small subsample of of the cohort in general. Um, but the I I sorry I lost my train of thought.

[00:23:41]The thing I struggle with with this stuff is one I think it's interesting, >> right? Two, I think it's important not because I think they're going to win, but because because they can do real damage. Oh yeah, >> right. And that's bad enough, right? And um >> and three, you know, George Will loves to say small, ideologically dedicated minorities uh change the world.

[00:24:10]I agree with that. I think that's right.

[00:24:12]I think what it leaves out is that a lot of small ideologically engaged minorities take their shot and frigin vanish without trace.

[00:24:24]>> And picking which one is which is is a credential question. And I think the fact that Vance is on board with this stuff, at least rhetorically, >> um >> tells you that you should take it seriously.

[00:24:37]That's something we really stress in the book is that, you know, conceivably we're one heartbeat away from a post-lberal presidency. That's, you know, something that immediately makes this stuff more serious uh than uh a simple intellectual exercise about describing what post-liberalism is and and like because it has direct bearing on the future, at least of a political party, if not a country, you know. Um and the the the trouble with um um the the the factional issue you raise is uh very real and that's the historical section of the book where you actually talk about what these other regimes did >> and had integralist or post-liberal factions within them. And what's funny is they all dealt with very similar problems. Um the thing like the ideal state that you get from Adrian Vermule, right? This idea of like there being an executive that oversees a bureaucracy is that it's nonpartisan, right? That it's it's it's consolidated authority and that power is indivisible.

[00:25:39]>> But that's never how these regimes operate. There's always factions.

[00:25:42]Parties manifest those factions in representative democracies. And authoritarian regimes, they're all informal, right? They're all like tightly knit sort of like suspicious of each other and and all of the post-lberal regimes we look at like a Franco Spain you know that's where you know the the um the triumph was published out of you know and and Salazar's um Portugal and Dolphus' Austria all of them are trying to form like unitary parties but inside those parties are those same factions and so post liberals are a faction sort of headed by um by someone like uh Vance.

[00:26:20]But then there are other groups within Trump's broader movement that they have nothing to do with these people, right?

[00:26:27]Like you don't you don't see uh post-lberal priests uh placing their hands on Trump whenever they're doing the blessings, right? It's always Paula White. Uh and so what you end up with is a kind of internally contested informal pursuit of authority. And my my position has always been that they're just waiting at this point. Like they're just waiting because they're not going to get it with Trump. They want to be well positioned for what comes next.

[00:26:49]>> Yeah. So that that reminds me what I wanted to ask which what I brain farted on.

[00:26:53]>> So at the beginning of all of this >> there in like 2015 2016 which I'm not saying is the beginning of post liberalism right post liberalism has begats going back you know to the middle ages or whatever. But um um there seemed to be almost this united front that included you know what I've been telling people is there are many rooms in the mansion of of the new right.

[00:27:21]>> Yeah.

[00:27:22]>> And for a while it felt like the nationalists the hon crowd the naccon crowd and the postliberal integralist crowd were in the same room. And I think they were like the first Natcon thing, right?

[00:27:40]>> But I mean, you guys know this stuff better than I do, but reconciling nationalism as the core philosophical framework of a political movement with Catholicism has some tensions, >> especially with Hoszone's book, right, which is not nice to Catholics, >> which is not nice to Catholic, which basically says that America needs to be the Protestant Israel for want of a better term, right? And um um and then there was this falling out where like all of a sudden they started you know it and from a from a classical liberal traditional conservative perspective it had a certain feel of Judean people's front versus people's front of Judea.

[00:28:22]>> But actually no like philosophically there's a real difference between the sort of new nationalism and the the new post-liberal integralism. So like can you one of you guys a explain the differences? I mean I have my own views but you're the guests. And b when did that what how how much of a schism is there today between those two groups?

[00:28:43]Because I think this is when you're talking about factions waiting for their shot at power. The other group at least among quote unquote intellectuals are the new nationalists are the natons. and they may share an animosity towards liberalism but their their preferred substitute isn't >> particularly Catholic coded or postliberal integralist coded right so like what is the state of that schism and what you know or is it just everyone's agreeing to like focus on owning the libs still >> that's definitely uh always on the menu uh owning the libs Um the uh it's an interesting story especially because um it's it's been hard to follow in some cases uh the because so much of this is behind the scenes but at one point you had natcons being conferences national conservative conferences being held in Europe and they were primarily funded by Orban organizations like Matias Caribbean's Kleigium and the Danube Institute which were all themselves like just basically directly funded by Hungarian taxpayers and European and uh subsidies to Hungary.

[00:29:54]>> Um and so the control over na national conservativism is itself kind of subject to change. Originally it was Edund Burke uh foundation, Yoram Hazone and his outfit. It became increasingly seated to people like Sorb Sharma at American Moment and Kevin Roberts and Heritage. I went to the 2022 one and and there were heritage interns uh stuffing bags uh because Yorum didn't have enough people there just to do this kind of stuff. Uh and I think now it's been neutralized pretty strongly as as an independent group from where the post liberals are and Kevin kind of making repromon with them is important. in 2022 he was saying bad things about intergalists now like Chad Peknold's a regular over there and he's and he's a post-lberal of of the first order uh and so um it's it's hard to pin down what's going on behind the scenes and this is sort of typical of of what kind of politics emerge from uh in in post-lberalism is that there's this sort of exterior that's meant to uh be a presentation of the movement and then an interior that's like roing with positions and uh and changes of fortune.

[00:31:07]Uh, and one of the big ones being the loss of Orban and and his ability to fund a lot of this sort of thing. Like one of the easiest ways to recruit people into their own faction is to take them on a first class flight out to Budapest and, >> you know, and and laugh at their jokes.

[00:31:22]Um, uh, so it's it's hard to say.

[00:31:25]>> I was invited to speak at the Danube Institute many times and have passed.

[00:31:30]That was one of the jokes that we had in our It was like uh we wanted to make a t-shirt that said I did not take Orbon money, but we weren't going to sell many copies because of how many people did.

[00:31:40]>> Oh, yeah. I mean, another slogan might be, you know, uh follow the foreign, right? That's the uh Hungarian currency.

[00:31:49]>> Hungarian currency.

[00:31:52]>> Yeah. So, so the um the factions are are are different from what they are in 2015. And um and I think this speaks to the success of the vermule sort of approach, right? like ISI is now very much what Johnny Burka's left but while he was there um Denine and and Pcnold were very much behind the honors program and filtered a lot of students through and Kevin Roberts started a Danube institute cooperation until you know you know recently would have been very profitable consolidating this kind of apparatus which is linked to a bunch of other European things right like um uh the uh the the Hungarians were not alone they have a bunch like sister parties in other countries >> like um National Rally in France.

[00:32:40]>> Um >> so there was definitely >> Yeah. Yeah. AFD and what's the one in Spain that Kevin Roberts spoke to? Vox >> Vox is the >> popul I don't know if Robert spoke to take your word for it just but it's the populist rightist kind of thing.

[00:32:56]>> Yeah. So this this whole thing was kind of going to be an international realignment. And if you look at the work of Philip Pilkington or Gladen Papin, they talk about the end of liberal imperium and the creation of a multipolarity that would be launched by these right-wing populist parties.

[00:33:10]>> Mhm.

[00:33:12]>> Sorry, we got went a little different direction than the question >> about the populist thing though. It's kind of a front for them. They really if you really deep down I've I think what deep down all these people are even though they they only vermule will cite Schmidt explicitly. They basically have that same desire to consolidate power and have somebody who can control everything from the center and things like immigration are kind of secondary to them. They use it as a it's like the Motton Bailey, right? Like, oh, post liberalism is about stopping this unlimited immigration because they know that's really popular, >> right? But what they really care about is the consolidation of power so they can, you know, in the future pursue even larger agenda.

[00:33:51]>> Yeah.

[00:33:53]>> So, so the thing I don't get, um, all right, so here's how I understand it.

[00:33:59]um Denine's book, Why Liberalism Failed, you know, um I was pretty critical of it. I did a pan I did an event with him >> um where I said, "Look, there are good things in the book that I agree with."

[00:34:11]Like I've always been a big federalism guy, right? Like I think I think localism and subsidiarity is the way you >> you cut the Gordian knot of a lot of the tensions that develop if you just have a nationalized politics, particularly in a giant continental nation, right? let more people live the way they want to live, right? Um, very Catholic idea. The end of his book, he talks about that about like different experiments to sort of deal with all that. And I was like, okay, I'm with you on that. That's that's a compromise. I see the world differently than you, >> but I want more people to live the way they want to live. And then my understanding is that Vermule was like, >> that was his chief criticism of or among his chief criticisms of why liberalism failed is, you know, you lost the plot.

[00:34:52]You don't get it. M >> if you don't like liberalism, you have to want a freaking king who's loyal to the pope in Rome. I'm parap I'm paraphrasing, right? And and >> and Denine basically caves to this.

[00:35:06]>> Yeah. And um and like so the the one redeem or the most redeeming thing in a book I really disagreed with on a lot of levels was he he throws that overboard to get in cool with the with the the new hotness of the of the post liberals. And the thing I don't really understand though conceptually is why the post liberals disagree with the subsidiarity point because like the Catholic Church has a pretty deep investment in subsidiarity. And if you're actually looking at trying to wield power, >> I mean, again, it's on the rank, it's on the remnant bingo card.

[00:35:46]>> Why can't any of these jackwads just try to take over Rhode Island >> like like have a demonstration effect, right? Where like this is how we're going to live. Everyone has the right to exit. If they don't want to like adhere to our stuff, they can move, you know, or whatever, but like >> try it at some local level.

[00:36:06]you know, like like I have very complicated views about Rod and the Benedict option stuff and all of that, but like >> that seems to me like the Catholic answer to this. If you want to actually have this infusion of politics versus, you know, >> um if you want to have this merger of politics and and theology, >> start small with people who agree. Try not don't do the conversion stuff or and certainly don't try to impose your views because that's not theologically sound.

[00:36:38]Like start with people who believe it.

[00:36:40]Demonstrate that it's a more fulfilling life which it might be and then build from that like demonstration effect. And yet they're all this is why I've always thought this was always about power and not actually about their own ideas.

[00:36:52]>> But why why don't like do they have an answer about why they don't want subsidiarity?

[00:36:58]Well, for one, I mean, uh, Vermule uh, flips subsidiarity on its head, right?

[00:37:03]>> Yeah. in if you look through the papal encyclical when they bring up subsidiarity or they call it the principle of subsidiary function or all the other Leo the 13th doesn't use the term but he has the idea all of that it's always emphasis on preserving the autonomy of lower levels of organization including the individual against a threat of an overbearing like state overbearing higher level >> that's always the emphasis and the concession is except in these situations where they need help right So it's like a subsidiary function, right? So if well in his book, Vermule flips it. And so the the primary focus of subsidiarity is in that higher coming to the aid of the lower. And he he calls he says that he identifies it with Schmidt's state of exception.

[00:37:53]And the exception very as with Schmidt, the exception very quickly becomes the rule. you open the exception, the possibility of the exception and then that allows for the rule that becomes the new rule, right? And that's why he wants to give as much power as he can to higher levels of authority so that they can go in and fix the lower whenever they need to. Um, and he believes in he believes in a a strong world government.

[00:38:17]He said it multiple many many times. He believes that uh you also hear these guys say that we're not about nations but empire is is a better form than just the nation state but empire and then uh remle says um that it's of the natural law that we have a world government right and he and he believes in like a larger government that controls everything um I like I I think you're right I mean he just has that desire for power I mean he and it's not his power it's sort of you live vicariously through whoever it is that you gave all that power. It's it's very strange, but it's it's hard for me to to to >> to relate with it, but I've seen it in many people, but especially Vermule.

[00:38:59]This >> Robbie George has a way of describing it as the fight orflight response or the endocrine response to like liberalism, especially at the time when Denine wrote that book. I mean, it's hard for us to remember, but this was back, you know, in the hangover from Romney's defeat, and he had been talking about like firing people, and the whole thing felt like um there was never going to be a proper conservative resistance to what was seen as a kind of inevitable progressive victories of of um Obama.

[00:39:29]One of the funny things about Denine's original book, Why Liberalism Failed, is that he was going to finish it and then Trump won and he had to like, you know, do what a lot of people that year had to do >> like Disney with their wax museum thing, right?

[00:39:45]>> Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly right. The end of the book is exactly like that Disney wax museum where the Trump looks like Hillary Clinton. Uh and and so he does do the um he does do the Roger Rare sort of Benedict option thing and the reason that Vermule um is able to be persuasive is that there's this example that and I was like frantically searching for it and I couldn't find it in time. Uh but uh Denine Vermule Papin and Phil Munoz um uh are at uh an event at Notre Dame I think in like 2018 or 2019 in which they're talking about this this review Vermule wrote for American affairs where he took Denine to task and um uh the fight response is what uh Vermule wants and his example is of a community a Christian community I want to say it's in um either Michigan or Indiana, I think it's in Michigan, uh that is an intentional Christian community that he describes as being beset by the forces of liquid modernity, which is very esoteric. I mean, how how Harvard can you get but with liquid modernity? And what he actually does leaves out from that story is that the problem is that clansmen came to that community and forbade any nonwhite, non-Christians from owning homes there.

[00:41:06]And what person wanted to do was to will put in their will that their wife would receive a house and she was Jewish. Uh and so she was actually uh restricted from owning that home because of the local rules about homeownership. And that's not liquid modernity, right?

[00:41:21]That's just >> that's just historical uh discrimination against Jews. Uh and this is this is the problem that Vermule wants to say is the sort of bigger problem, right? that like people will come into your local Christian community and demand things from you and they'll be liberal.

[00:41:39]>> The liberal demands on the Christian community will be for example allow Jews to own property. When you start generalizing that to the national level, it starts to become really scary stuff.

[00:41:50]Um because um and this is something I got from Christopher Reguza who's a friend of mine who who track who who tracked down that citation. That that's why it was important to me to kind of find the case which maybe you can put in the show notes. Mhm.

[00:42:03]>> Um but um and this is this is the the sort of the the reason they had to pivot to post-lberalism from Catholic integralism because a lot of Catholic integralism doesn't allow for the toleration of religious minorities uh or recognize the rights of religious peoples outside of the church. uh and um and that that's one of the sort of like motivators behind I know like Archbishop Cordelion writing the forward to it which is that the church doesn't sponsor these uh these concepts. Mhm.

[00:42:34]>> So, um I worry that a lot of normies who are stuck with us um uh might not get the fundamental >> flaws in post liberalism, right? Because it's it's such a high level of abstraction.

[00:42:54]>> There's so much wish casting involved in it, right? And um you know there are I mean I can see a lot of very smart educated people sitting here listening to this in their car wherever saying but wait a second it's against the constitution to impose religious you know values on people who don't want us you know like like a lot of just sort of like high school civics 101 >> stuff is problematic here. And I think that gets to one of the structural conceptual failures of post liberalism is is >> that it just it >> it wants to wish away these safeguards that I would argue are as much cultural as they are constitutional. It's like the idea that America, like the average American >> Protestant, you know, Lutheran, Jewish, atheist, whatever, >> is just going to let a bunch of Catholic, you know, uh, shock troops come in and tell them how to live and how to worship and all that kind of stuff.

[00:43:56]>> It's basically science fiction as far as I'm concerned, right? But like so what are the like if if let's say you have a college I'm sure you had this you guys are both professors or or fancy pants college people university people um >> my pants are very fancy >> I assumed uh like sort of the kasac pantaloon >> um college freshman smart kid comes up to you and just says okay so what's actually not not the insider intrigue factionalism Why can't post-lberalism work? Like what would your answer be?

[00:44:33]>> The the trouble you run into with postliberalism is that uh as Kevin Valier who wrote a really great book on integralism explains is that in order to get from theory to practice requires violating all the principles of Catholic integralism, right? So you know if you're not supposed to engage in unjust uh use of violence, um guess what? you know, in order for this to to get implemented, even in historically like Catholic majority states that implement the same kind of designs, the extent to which they have to use political violence is is unbelievable. And so the magical thinking that you're describing is sort of like the like the gap between the achievement. That's sort of like a question mark on it, but it's actually not a question mark. It's a graveyard.

[00:45:16]That's what's there, right? If you, you know, if you look at like even very like soft right-wing authoritarian regimes that emerge to do this sort of thing, like in Dulus' Austria, he still like opens artillery fire onto a group of apartment complexes that are housing people of an opposing political party and he kills a bunch of innocent people and he wants to have like public executions of people and stuff like that. Uh and and so this is the reason why we were so troubled and why like a large part of the book is historical.

[00:45:47]That's the section that actually took the the the extra year to write to explain how like what we're really talking about here is a wish to political violence.

[00:45:55]>> Uh and and the and that is in and of itself the violation of Catholicist ideas. You're not supposed to have this kind of violence. So people are supposed to kind of welcome the truth of the Christian view that Catholics possess.

[00:46:10]uh and then uh accept it. But if you look at the texts that cause my opinion the shift from using the term integralism to post-lberalism, it's a book called integralism uh a book of Catholic political philosophy by Thomas Crane and Alan Feister. They're very clear about the fact that Jews won't have rights.

[00:46:29]Orthodox um Christians and Protestants will be subject to state penalty.

[00:46:36]um you know and um women won't have representation in government uh because they're supposed to be represented by the head of household. They you know have all kinds of versions of slavery that are okay. You know at least Feminister and Korean are honest about the proposition here and the transition to a new brand of post-lberal was a way of kind of like eliminating a lot of what was very obvious and integralist conversations before then. So, uh, the fact that it is opposed to the constitution is of no problem, uh, at least for some of the more hardcore here because what constitution, right? That's going to go away. And, um, there was a story that was sort of in the ether for a very long time that finally got put into the Atlantic, which is when Gladen Papen, who's one of these intergalists, was uh, asked at an ISI event about um, what he saw about the future of politics. She genuinely believed after seeing Melania Trump go to the Vatican that she was going to be made queen of the country.

[00:47:39]And getting Jeff Plet to put that on record in the Atlantic was like uh one of my favorite things about, you know, this whole this whole thing. Uh and and people are like, "Oh, he was kidding."

[00:47:49]And the whole point is that he was not kidding or he was he was maybe a little maybe inebriated, I think, as part of the story. I don't know. But he was being very serious. Well, there's a lot of Dwight Shroos at the top of the pyramid of the post-liberal Mland.

[00:48:04]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that that actually makes that that that helps, right? I actually think that makes a lot of sense, right? Is there's a lot of cosplay types who don't realize it's cosplay. There are a lot of people who want to be like the yearning, you know, the whole CS Lewis thing about men without chests, you know, like there's a there is a real danger there about this is the point Fukuyama makes at the end of of of >> end of history is like the the last man problem is real is like if you have people >> who want meaning through struggle.

[00:48:36]>> Yes.

[00:48:36]>> They will end up struggling against >> all that is good because they take it for granted. Right. And um the like the number of people who want this is my problem with the flight 93 election crap.

[00:48:49]>> This is my problem with you know all these guys who want there to be a civil war >> because it would give them meaning in some way. Um and you just you it kind of oozes off the page when you read some of these people. It's like they, you know, the whole do you know what time it is thing is is is caught up in that. Um but like All right. So what institutions would you say um have been significantly infested, corrupted, taken over? Um are we through the worst of it? Is it in the rearview mirror? I mean, like the beowning of the her the self-destruction of the Heritage Foundation is one of the most remarkable stories of my professional life, right?

[00:49:43]>> But where else has ISI in your opinion gone post-liberal? Um, is it permanently there? Um, I mean, I have my own views about ISI these days, but um, like is the worst of the damage done and the the cleanup operation is starting or is is the trend line still going the wrong way?

[00:50:04]>> Well, um, I think um, so much has likely changed as a result of Orbon's ouster.

[00:50:13]Um, there are sort of like three networks of funding for this operation.

[00:50:18]And one has been in in Hungary. Another one has been sort of like tech world around teal.

[00:50:23]>> And uh and another one is Klinganstein and in Claremont. Uh Tom Klinganstein.

[00:50:28]And he's sort of like the third distant third.

[00:50:31]>> Klinganstein for the listeners know >> I think is one of the most ridiculous characters in uh intellectual life. He's >> he's um he's chairman of the Claremont Institute. So he's helped destroy a lot of the credibility of a place that I used to have a lot of affection for. Um, you know, when they did the, uh, best of Claremont review of books book, they asked, they knew I was such a super fan, they asked me to review it. And, um, and I'm actually the person who got Tucker Carlson to subscribe to the Claremont Review Books because he had never heard it before of it before until I told him about it. So, like I have things to answer. I I don't have as bad record as John Podoritz who's like literally given Jobs >> to a lot of disappointments, but um including Tucker. Um >> I hear you guys say this a lot and I just cuz I'm going to be on the show now. I'm on the show. No, you guys bear no responsibility for Tucker. It's Tucker's response, but don't you dare take any responsibility for >> I I know. I know. I just I I You feel Sometimes you feel a little like Zealot, right? like or or or forest gum just cuz you were like >> your paths crossed and like you feel like I could have stopped them, right?

[00:51:40]Um >> I see. I see.

[00:51:42]>> Um but um >> there was no way to know.

[00:51:45]>> Yeah. No, that's true. I mean, and so like again, like what you know what like how much money could Victor Orban have actually poured into? I mean, the way you talk about it sounds like a gazillion people took Orban money and like I I could probably name five people that I think it's very likely of particularly if you lived in in Budapest and worked out of one of these institutions. But beyond that, like how much Orban money do you think is actually swashing around up?

[00:52:17]>> I should I should be careful cuz I don't mean to make it sound like there's, you know, some sort of cabal of Hungarians, you know, and it's because we're cheap dates. Uh you get academics, like I said, on a flight to Budapest and laugh at their jokes. That's not expensive.

[00:52:32]>> Uh and you know, of academics, the the cheapest states are conservative academics because there aren't as many of them. They have fewer opportunities and they usually >> fewer junkets. That's true, right?

[00:52:42]>> Yeah. And they and they usually I work at universities that can't pay them as well. Uh and so the opportunities uh don't require a lot of money and Hungary of course is not like a booming economy, right?

[00:52:52]>> Um so the institutions that are captured here, there were those over in Hungary, those who knows what's going to happen with them. That's like Danube Institute.

[00:52:59]The two publications, Hungarian Conservative and European Conservative, Matias Corbin's Kleium. These are just terms to keep in your mind if you're still listening and interested in this sort of thing. Um, uh, and then there's Heritage, there's ISI, uh, American Moments, um, is is another one. What else do you got, uh, Tom? I'm I'm I'm I'm sort of running out of options here.

[00:53:21]>> I guess you could say some elements of Franciscan at Stupid Hill.

[00:53:26]>> Well, I mean, you you see it a lot in the um Catholic intellectual world, though it's getting less popular now. I think James I think there are a bunch of people that blocked James and I are starting to agree with us now. So, so they were just >> um but I also I think that they were had high hopes of this idea of the the proximity to power with Orban and uh Advance and one of those is gone and one of those is on life support. You know, it's not it's not it's not even certain that first of all, it's not certain that if Vance had power that he would share any of it with them. Um it's uh not certain that he's going to get the nomination and certainly not certain he's going to win the general election.

[00:54:09]So I think their last hope really of any sort of institutional power now that or bond's gone and all of that is is Vance that they're just clinging to Vance at this point. Does that seem right to you, James?

[00:54:20]>> Yeah. And one other thing is that um a lot of the people who are recruited into this sort of thing haven't gotten far enough in their careers >> uh to to make big plays. Uh and so if it's not being done through like this kind of nexus of people at at Heritage, then it's not going to be taken over by like board members like it was there.

[00:54:42]It's going to be instead it's just going to be you have a certain number of people that you can hire and if they're all people that were sort of you know suckled on the teeth of post-lberalism then um you're going to be executing uh Vermile's plan for him right you're going to hire have to hire one of them and they're all the same guy and their political views but the thing is as as Tom's saying is >> this is a book that's talking about why this failed and then it just so happened to fail right when we were about to publish the book so that's useful for us >> um so I'm less concerned than I used to be. Although we still have to see who h who they hire over at ISI. Um uh and hopefully they'll be able to kind of return it to what its original principles are. It was just not political organization or ideological fitting. Yeah.

[00:55:28]>> Right. It's supposed to be reading great books and talking to people who also like great books. supposed to be.

[00:55:34]>> Well, one of the things that we're seeing as a problem for them is that um you know the if you take the number of these like sort of you know uh cons intellectual post liberals and then the number of gripers of like Nick Fuentes I think Nick Fuentes is gropers outnumber them like 7 to1. So, so, so their soldiers are becoming these like radical gropers even though they are, you know, I mean, I don't think most of the post-lberals have an anti-semitism problem. That's more historical, what we call historical post- liberalism.

[00:56:05]There's big anti-semitism problem, but they're soldiers. There is a big anti-semitism problem because you get a lot of these like people that are like Nick Fuentes followers that are are the ones that they end up hiring for these positions that they find for them in in, you know, wherever it is. So that's going to be >> and there's no resources within post liberalism to oppose anti-semitism. I've been when it time and I actually disagree on this. I'm a bit more I'm a bit more emphatic on this.

[00:56:29]>> Well, some of the post liberals have gone along with some of the Israel scapegoating recently I've noticed.

[00:56:34]>> Yeah. A and the reason for that is as Tom said like historically post-liberalism like had at its core like a conspiracy theory against the Jews. and and Denine uh Denine actually NY and why liberalism failed does a great deal of work to kind of drain that conspiracy theory of any kind of explanatory power and the way that he does it is rather than there being a secret cabal of Jews and Freemasons of imposing liberalism on unsuspecting uh people it's that it's like an impersonal social force that we can't help but endure until it finally exhausts itself >> and they may complain about globalists or something like that or you know >> yeah but it's always there on the fringes of their theory.

[00:57:15]>> But that's the thing is like you know the the the second book was regime change that Den wrote, right? Like the >> I couldn't decide how much of it he was trying to be cute >> and trollish and how much he actually sincerely believed >> the stuff but he would like you know >> mimic Lenin saying what is to be done right there's all of this stuff. Um the I will say this as someone who's you know day job for a very long time has been just a sort of normal political pundit. The political punditry in it was abysmal. Um like it just like walk down the hall and talk to a political science for >> something's sake. Um and uh um uh but that's the thing I think is so sort of so cards on the table. My view is is that >> liberalism, you know, the opposite of liberalism, rightly understood, isn't conservatism, >> it's illiberalism, right?

[00:58:18]>> And illiberalism, once you embrace illiberalism, yes, there's a right-coded illiberalism and there's a leftcoded illiberalism, but the similarities are much more significant and obvious >> to me than the differences because they're identitarian, they're statist, you know, you just go down a long list, >> and they hate the Jews. They always the Jews are always scapegoed about the >> the the Jew the anti-semitism stuff. I mean I've actually been very surprised that the anti-semitism stuff has not been more pronounced in the post liberal thing because it is the foremost horseshoe theory >> conduit right um I mean there's a reason why it's called the socialism of fools.

[00:58:55]Um, and um, but I find that the the argument that Denine makes in in in it's pushed me to actually do a lot more homework about all this, right? But this idea that liberalism just comes out of the enlightenment. Um, what I just had a guy on Michael Bonner from Broner from uh Canada on here and he was talking about this sort of virgin birth of of liberalism theory >> that it just emerges ex nilo from the enlightenment is just wrong. It's like much more deeply rooted.

[00:59:29]>> Oh yeah. Christian theology and and and actual Jewish >> theology about you know the the the sanctity of being made in the image of God and all this >> and um >> and that's where I think the the Hzone and the Denines sort of started from the same premise >> which was that all you have to do is prove to people that John Lock >> was wrong >> and all of a sudden a lot of this stuff sort of you know dematerializes and I like as a political project. I just think that's barmy. But like that's their or organizing principle in a lot of ways.

[01:00:08]>> But one of the things you're you're you're really seizing on here is the fact that integralism and post liberalism are very modern. I mean they pretend to be like a a a sort of retrieval of the medieval, but again they have this historical view that is in the same vein as Marxism, right? It's just a right-wing Hegelianism. Uh and rather than the story being um the capitalists selling the ropes that we'll hang them with as proletarians, the story is the people will revolt but they will wish for the king that they executed and he will return and he will be better than ever. And this is the demestian uh version of the same historical development. And the way that you're able to kind of square this like overwhelming tendency of post-liberalism to become anti-semitic and some are right some some post-liberals are um and you know and at least in some of the positions they take uh I think the most egregious example is when Edund Volstein on on Twitter tried to defend at least in principle the establishment of Jewish ghettos >> and this turned in it was shortly after this that uh Volstein left social media.

[01:01:17]I assume this must have been not going over well with the people at his monastery.

[01:01:22]>> Uh, you know, >> can I say that out loud?

[01:01:25]>> Guys, that was the thing is that like for a very long time, you have like a very devout, very, honestly, a very lovely person who was saying things that are so unhinged that think people think like he's trolling or someone has like hacked his account, but unfortunately he was being serious. Um, and that's what I mean about there being no internal resources for this sort of thing. Um but uh uh the reason that they have this is that they can sort of they can make common cause with the idea of a confessional state and hos will say yeah the confessional state in Israel should be Jewish. Mhm.

[01:01:57]>> Uh and the one in the United States he thinks should be Protestant and the integralist will say no it should be Catholic and we're going to do that by blank right either infil in integrating from within maybe you know >> another one that Vermile came up with was only allowing Catholic immigrants which was uh >> one of the more hilarious >> create the Empire of Guadalupe.

[01:02:19]>> Yeah. And and that's how they that's how they establish this barmy political alliance is that we like Israel because it's confessional too. Although Israelis dispute this, you know.

[01:02:30]>> Yeah. Know like like I don't know what like Hzone Honzy's description of Israel is highly contested by a lot of Israelis I know you know.

[01:02:41]>> Yeah. Um all right. I mean I could do this all day. We didn't even get really into Peter Teal, right? So, like very quickly, is Peter Teal a post-lberal? Is is there a He talks a lot about the Antichrist these days?

[01:02:55]>> Um, and you know, um, it seems to me if when when a New York Times podcaster, my friend Ross Stout, asks you, you know, if you're the antichrist, you shouldn't pause.

[01:03:11]>> Um, you know, just I just a PR thing, right? Um, just like >> just come out of the gates. Nope, not me. You know, um but um I can't quite I can't get a radar fix on Teal, right? Cuz sometimes he seems like a Curtis Jarvin who I actually think >> I'm I'm I'm here all day to dunk on Adrien Vermule and the silliness of a lot of his stuff.

[01:03:36]>> Adrien Vermule is an intellectual titan compared to Curtis Jarvin as far as I can tell.

[01:03:42]>> Um >> but like is there crosspollination? Is is is is teal the lynch pin that connects these different camps. They're sort of the Silicon Valley neo monarchism with the Catholic, you know, post liberalism.

[01:03:55]>> Well, I see there's a relationship of convenience. I mean, he's certainly close with Vance as well. And I think he's sort of because Vance is kind of stuck between The Liberals and Yarvin over there on the Theel side, although Theo's become less enamored by Yarvin, I guess, last couple years. um >> because he listened to him and realized >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. But um but uh yeah, there is some tension there, right? Because um I think there's some even though I think Teal is Protestant, right? But he uh he was attracted to um uh Rene Gerard who who was Catholic and I think that gives him some sympathy with the Catholics because of Rene Gerard but at the same time he seems to think that the pope is or at least thought the last pope was the maybe the antichrist and >> this pope and you know so you have that that there and then vances between him and you know the post-liberal so I think there is some tension there. There's also tension in the idea of being integralists who don't ever agree with the pope, you know. I mean, that's >> right. Yeah. So, >> Teal's most orthodox Protestant position is considering the pope the antichrist.

[01:05:03]>> Um, but but uh the Teal I think is uncertain about his own view and that's that's reflected in like the constant moving around of other people uh be behind him.

[01:05:14]And in the historical cases we look at um the church or people that are advocating for the church represent one political faction and normally there's another party that's more secular and fascist like the fangs in Spain or the him in Austria or um Salazar wasn't really all that religious and he kind of >> yeah Salazar >> Salazar pretended to be religious and then he wasn't but yeah so there's these this game that's played where um it is much easier for them to cooperate until they actually secure government and then things go haywire pretty quickly as factions try to press their maximum advantage. And I think one of the reasons why it's so hard to pin this stuff down is that uh is that they're playing that game at the moment. But Teal is definitely one of the chief players in all this, especially with Orban sort of being xed out. um uh he's going to be an important figure here uh in order to secure his patronage or or advantage and uh him being sort of murial himself makes it odd. Uh I think we're hearing that he was one of the people that pushed for Vance to become Catholic or liked the idea of him becoming Catholic and then we got a different pope, right? Um >> and an American pope which makes this all very complicated. Um, so it's it's a case of stay tuned because I could give you an answer, but even if I'm right, I'm probably going to be wrong in a >> But that's what the thing we see consistently is they all agree. They come into coalition because they agree we're going to give a bunch consolidate a bunch of power behind this person or behind this group and then but they can't agree on what you're going to do with that power afterwards. And that's always that's the downfall like probably what 60% of the time, James, for these these hardcore Catholic reactionary groups. What happened to them down in Argentina for instance? They just basically What happened in Argentina, James?

[01:07:02]>> Oh, there were a bunch of huggists in office. Guy named Hugo Vost uh was a a crazy he was like a I think Department of Justice uh secretary. He was like a crazed anti-semite. Wrote like uh dramatizations of the protocols of the elder of Zion. And Peron kind of got sick of these guys being weird and annoying and alienating people. So he basically just kicked him out. and he called them poo votos I think is the term uh which is people who scare away the voters. Um so so this is the problem right like of not having your own constituency and trying to integrate from within and being an elite figure is that eventually if you're in office and and weird people want to get rid of you um and that that's the sort of weakness behind the design and these regimes repeat this over and over again which we talk about in the book.

[01:07:47]>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it makes me think about all the Marxists who were part of the Iranian revolution that um >> Oh, yeah.

[01:07:53]>> Then like Ron Burgundy in the Bear Pit were like, "We have made a huge >> I immediately regret my >> All right, guys. I could do this all day, but I actually have an editorial meeting I am late for. Uh, good luck with the book." Uh, June >> June 22.

[01:08:13]>> June 22nd.

[01:08:14]>> Okay. All right. June 22nd. Mark it down. pre-order now.

[01:08:18]>> Buy dozens. Give them to your friends and make them buy.

[01:08:20]>> Happy to have you guys back. Um and uh and good luck and thank you for doing this cuz I know it's like uh it's it's it's a lot of like reading crap that you want to yell at.

[01:08:32]>> Oh my god, it's awful.

[01:08:34]>> Um >> but uh I appreciate it and I it saved me a lot of work. So I appreciate that as well.

[01:08:40]>> Um and >> and thanks for having us on. We we're we're honored to be on here. We're big fans. Thanks, Jonah.

[01:08:47]>> Happy to do it.

[01:08:48]>> Silence your phone next time you're on a podcast. That's a pro tip. You know, >> he's only been doing this for years.

[01:08:53]>> Yeah. Um, >> sorry.

[01:08:56]>> Uh, >> all right. We'll leave it at that. Uh, I got to do this thing where you know this No, you won't. This is a podcast [ __ ] So, I need one of you guys to say or both of you, you can do it in unison. No, you won't. This is a podcast. Can you do it?

[01:09:09]>> Oh, yeah.

[01:09:09]>> Okay. Three, two, one.

[01:09:13]>> No, you won't. This >> No, you won't. This is a podcast. That was terrible. Let's try it again.

[01:09:18]>> I'll say no, you won't. And you say this is a podcast.

[01:09:20]>> That works. Okay.

[01:09:21]>> Yeah.

[01:09:22]>> Go.

[01:09:23]>> No, you won't.

[01:09:23]>> This is a podcast.