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Conservatism

Why Postliberalism Failed--And Is Likely to Fail Again

Contemporary postliberalism may be a fitting ideology for the age—but that hardly makes its agenda a good one, let alone an American one.  

Jonathan H. Adler | 9.10.2026 10:22 PM

Today Civitas Outlook published a mini-symposium responding to the new book, Why Postliberalism Failed by James Patterson and Thomas Howes. Contributors include Richard Reinsch, David Schaefer. and yours truly.

My own contribution to the symposium, "The Pre-History of Postliberalism," explains how the postliberal critique of the American political tradition and American conservatism is not new, nor are the theoretical claims upon which it relies. As Patterson and Howes point out, the underlying ideas have been deployed before--and to quite ill effect--in other countries. As I add, these ideas have had adherents on the American right before, and they should be no more convincing........

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