The terms “fascist” and “fascism” are continuously bandied about today. But those who use these words most seem to understand them least, such that many of today’s self-styled anti-fascists paradoxically take on the central features of fascism to an extraordinary degree.
Read MoreBoris Mezhuev: From what we know in Russia, in the US you are considered to be one of the leaders of an intellectual movement known as post-liberalism which stands distinct from mainstream conservatism. Would you agree with this and if yes, can you describe the key points of post-liberalism? Does it indeed base itself on rejecting the liberal legacy of John Locke and to a certain extent that of the Founding Fathers?
Patrick Deneen: I am often identified as one of a number of more conservative thinkers who support moving toward “post-liberalism.” These include a number of thinkers in the U.S., England, and Europe who have recently risen to prominence. My book Why Liberalism Failed, provided a relatively early diagnosis of the crisis of liberalism that is now evident to every observer of politics in the West …
Read MoreDespite decades of pronouncements from Brussels and Strasbourg on the primacy of pan-European solidarity and cross-border cooperation, the European Union’s uneven response to the coronavirus pandemic has only strengthened a trend already well under way in Italy, Hungary, and elsewhere, toward a renewal of national sovereignty on the continent.
Read MoreSvetlana Lourié’s essay “The Road to Transhumanism” is in the vein of philosophy of history. It aims to make sense of seemingly scattered geopolitical and technological innovations, as advancing an amorphous and ultimately sinister “Project”: “the Man-God, who, with help from modern medicine and artificial intelligence, is being designed to live forever …
Read MoreThe crisis of the conservative mainstream, both in the Western world and in our own country, has recently given rise to new and interesting trends, which, even if they are still at the stage of schools of thought or intellectual persuasion, in the future are no doubt destined to play a significant role on the historical stage. This latter holds true in particular for post-liberalism, a school which has a number of interesting theorists, and includes the political and religious philosopher Patrick Deneen and the philosopher and historian of political thought David C. Schindler.
Read MoreEvery human death feels unnatural. Even the peaceful passing of elderly relatives who’ve lived rich lives and completed the full circuit of experiences we all feel entitled to—work, marriage, children, vacations, holidays—are attended by a grief so massive that it slips our processes of rational cognition. It hits us obliquely, and never chronologically. I’m walking through the produce aisle of the grocery store and unexpectedly, while lifting a bag of apples into my cart, I feel the shocking lightness of my grandfather’s body as I bathed him while he was dying of cancer. Anguish so vast that it reaches you in fragmented details outside of time. A sack of apples becomes a spirit medium. How can the loss of a person be natural?
Every human death feels unnatural, but murder even more so. The first murdered corpse I saw was in Baghdad during my initial deployment as an infantryman in 2007.
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