Much has already been said of the ongoing debate among conservatives sparked by Sohrab Ahmari’s criticism of classical liberalism in a now-infamous First Things essay. Ahmari’s article claimed National Review writer David French was the embodiment of everything he was arguing against, for both his classically liberal philosophy and civil temperament.
Many writers have subsequently defended David French from Ahmari’s attack. Essentially, they are advocating for classical liberalism, a philosophy that believes in property rights, individual freedom, limited government, and free markets. But few have pointed out the post-liberal coalition’s biggest weakness: Ahmari’s alternative, or lack thereof.
While Ahmari makes his distaste for the old conservative order clear, his essay fails to coherently advocate for an alternative. However, it hints at one when he says: “[President Trump] believes that the political community—and not just the church, family, and individual—has its own legitimate scope for action. He believes it can help protect the citizen from transnational forces beyond his control.”
Ahmari cloaks his analysis of Trump’s success in terms that would be unrecognizable to Trump himself. If the president was the man who Ahmari believes, he would have used the GOP’s control of the House and Senate to defund Planned Parenthood the minute he took office. A more honest version of the post-liberal conservative attraction to Trump can be found in an article by Ben Domenech, the founder of The Federalist: “Politics today is for the rough, the confrontational, and the unapologetic.”
Domenech, similarly to Ahmari, sees a wider scope for state actions than do classical liberals, and is more open to a winner-take-all approach to the culture war. Yet this argument is eerily reminiscent of children who claim the mistreatment of their siblings was justified because “they started it!”
Regardless, the nature of this new attraction to Trump is based in disposition, as is the distaste for French. Trump’s approach appeals to the post-liberal’s deep desire for conflict, for fighting the culture war with no rules of engagement. It is through men like Trump which Ahmari and company believe the conservative movement might best go about “discrediting their opponents and weakening or destroying their institutions.”
Let us, however, set aside all the other criticisms of Ahmari’s article and ask one question: Would it work?
Imagine for a moment if Ahmari really could persuade the conservative coalition to adopt a post-liberal approach to politics. What would happen? In order to examine this, we can look to the figurehead of the post-liberal faction, President Trump himself.
Recent 2020 polls in North Carolina indicate that Trump is behind former Vice President Joe Biden by double digits, while also trailing Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. In fact, Biden is ahead of Trump in every single national poll listed by RealClearPolitics. Trump’s disapproval ratings have been consistently higher than other presidents at similar times during their terms.
To be fair, early polls always warrant caution. Yet they symbolize something which Ahmari and his cohorts have not dealt with. Trump, and his version of politics, is widely unpopular outside of his base — and that base is not large enough to maintain political control on its own for very long.
Matthew Continetti said it well in the Washington Free Beacon: “Another question is whether the post-liberal project is sustainable in the first place. The post-liberals, like other nationalists, may have over-interpreted the results of the 2016 election.”
The success of post-liberal conservatives relies on a voting bloc which may not be around long enough to support the creation of Ahmari’s new America. How do these post-liberal conservatives, I wonder, hope to prevent younger, far-left generations from voting them out of office in the future and using the illiberal political machinery which we have so kindly constructed for them to tear down our own institutions?
Ahmari’s article offers no solution. At least “Frenchism” has the chance to persuade them to change sides.
Seth Newkirk is a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
