Postliberalism says that this liberalism has failed and must be replaced with something new, namely, a system that allows government to use its power to shape society into something more traditional and conservative. Liberalism, they say, values individual autonomy too much and has thus caused the social degeneration we see today.

To replace liberalism, they support a closer connection between church and state, government intervention in the economy to promote their ends, and expanding the power of the government in order to shape the country and its people according to their vision, even discussing the possible installation of a “red Caesar.” I have heard postliberals describe themselves as “big-government conservatives” due to their support for using state power, even if it risks running afoul of personal liberties.

Self-described postliberals currently reach as high up as our vice president, J.D. Vance.

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the document that encapsulates America’s liberal heritage, we must also take the time to learn vigilance against forces that would undermine it. The postliberals claim to be conservatives, but they are actually nothing of the sort.

Russell Kirk, a conservative thinker respected across the Right, published The Conservative Mind in 1953. Kirk sought to systematize conservatism for the 20th century. In his chapter devoted to Edmund Burke, the father of the conservative worldview, he makes a curious statement: “Burke was liberal because he was conservative.”

How could this be? Kirk explains that “He had defended the liberties of Englishmen against their king, and the liberties of Americans against king and parliament, and the liberties of Hindus against Europeans.”

This concern for liberty made Burke a liberal, but it came from his conservatism. Liberty was already written into the English mind, but there was more to Burke’s defense. Conservatives understand that one-size-fits-all attempts at governance are doomed to fail. Every country has a heritage and culture it draws upon, and thus each demands something different. Conservatives, within reason, respect these differences.

Perhaps the postliberal project would make sense in Europe, where its ideas have more historical precedent. But they are out of place in America. We are founded upon social contracts from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution. Concern for the rights of man has always animated our history. We cherish the checks and balances that postliberals challenge. America’s heritage (and thus its conservatism) is inescapably tied to liberalism.

A postliberal America would be something that is not America anymore, and is thus not conservative. 

Unfortunately, Kirk did not consistently hold to this standard. He showed this when he welcomed the old American southerners into his fold. The southerners certainly did defend an old order, but did so in opposition to the American order.

South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun saw liberty as a privilege to be earned, not a right to be secured. He called the principle of equality central to the American mind “unfounded and false.” Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, said the following in an 1861 speech:

“Those ideas [of the Constitution] were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery to the superior race is his natural condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Stephens explicitly states that the Confederacy is repudiating the heritage of the Union and replacing it with something new. Nothing is more revolutionary than this. Consequently, nothing is less conservative. Yet, it is exactly the sort of thing the postliberals would do if they severed America from liberalism. Instead of demanding a new order that enshrines slavery, they demand one that places an abstract “common good” over our rights, and broad government power for pursuing whatever the government defines that as. If you think that also sounds like the upheavers of the modern Left, you’re not alone.

Kirk gave the southerners an entire chapter in his book. In sad contrast, he gave only cursory attention to one of the greatest conservatives in American history: Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln stood upon his country’s heritage, saw the absurdity of southerners as conservatives, and repudiated it in an 1860 speech:

“You say you are conservative – while we are revolutionary… We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by ‘our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;’ while you with one accord reject and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new… Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.”

In the same light, consider the postliberal claim to conservatism. 

LINCOLN’S ‘APPLE OF GOLD’ AND THE CASE AGAINST COURT-PACKING

Like Burke, we are liberal because we are conservative. We stand upon the ideas and systems that have carried America for 250 years, and expect it to carry America for 250 more if they are kept.

The postliberals seek to tear these asunder and replace them with foreign concepts. Lincoln’s rebuke to the southerners applies also to the postliberals: No one who advocates something contrary to our heritage can ever be a conservative in our country.