Why Postliberalism Failed

James was very delayed in uploading this discussion that breaks from our usual subject area and format, but he decided that it was still worth uploading. Mind you, the original recording date was September 12, so the discussion is more about the initial response than the Late Night stuff or the Memorial Service.

Tom and James interview Joel Berry, Managing Editor of the Christian satire website Babylon Bee, about his experiences dealing with postliberalism and Christian Nationalism on the Protestant side of American politics. We also talk about the dance between being funny and being political and also a bit on the Parable of the Sower as relevant to the politics of the monent.

Tom and James talk to Victoria Holmes, who works on her own video series on Catholicism and politics here on YouTube. She also works at the The Dispatch an a multimedia editor. She talks to Tom and James about how bad postliberalism has become among people her age and what she hopes to do about it.

James and Tom talk about Father Josef Tiso, who was dictator of Slovakia during the Second World War. During those years, Slovakia was a client state of the Third Reich, and Tiso was a wily, ambitious Catholic priest who saw to the deaths of between 50,000 - 95,000 Jews until his hanging in 1946. Afterwards, Slovakia, like Croatia, managed to endure the worst of both worlds, first fascism and then communism.

Tom flies solo this week in our (late) video because James is taking care of a newborn and starting classes at a new university. We will be back together to talk soon, but we hope this is good enough to cover our bases for now!

After edgy social media poaster Pinesap debated the virtues of Francisco Franco in a debate with Mehdi Hasan, Franco Appreciation Content resurfaced. When Tom and James remarked on Franco's atrocities, we were once again visited with spurious claims about Franco's virtues as a pious Catholic leader who restored Spain. He was nothing of the sort, as Tom and James detail.

After several requests, Tom and I decided to do an episode on the worst example of postliberal governance, the Independent State of Croatia, operated by Ante Pavelic and the Ustase. It's a bit of a downer of an episode but important for people who take the rise of integralism and postliberalism seriously.

We review some of the major developments since we wrapped recording our first season. We cover the election of noted postliberal JD Vance to the Vice Presidency, the likely ouster of Viktor Orbán, the papacy of Pope Leo XIV, and other developments.

Thomas was eager to talk about Vichy after having completed the section on Vichy in our book. Vichy is important because of how its brief existence illustrated the inhumanity of postliberal ideas within the right wing Catholic culture that had fostered them. We are a little harried because Thomas was on the road and James having no idea what day it was.

Tom and James speak with Dr. H. David Baer (Texas Lutheran) about Englebert Dolfuss and the rise of Austrofascism of the 1930s and its influence on contemporary postliberals. They then pivot to discussing the centralized of Viktor Orbán to postliberal ideas and institutions.

We waited until after the election to upload this episode with friend of the podcast Fr. Stephen Vrazel. Fr. Vrazel gives us a sense of how much postliberalism is part of the ordinary life of a parish and where he has or has not seen it crop up in Catholic circles he travels in.

A recent episode of The Remnant featured its host, Jonah Goldberg, discussing contemporary political Catholicism with George Weigel. Weigel dismissed postliberalism and integralism as primarily "online" and hence marginal. Weigel reveals his age by dismissing online media as though it were not the primary source for young people to learn about the world. We discuss that more here.

This episode is about Fr. Martin Rhonheimer, one of the most important living theologians on the subject of human dignity, the common good, and democracy--although his work extends even beyond these subjects.

James talks about the misconceptions around the heresy of "Americanism" and how Ven. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen repurposed the term to defend a form of Catholic Republicanism. Tom patiently listens, as James clearly is way, way too interested in Sheen while, at the same time, regularly forgets names.

James interviews his friend Paul DeHart about his recent book The Social Contract in Ruins on U. of Missouri Press. Meanwhile, Tom saves his energy to make one comment during the entire episode because he has COVID and can barely stay conscious.

This week's episode features a flailing James and a locked in Thomas discussing the economics of religion with Ole Miss economics professor Clara Piano. She explains recent academic literature that posits the relatively weak faith of the Middle Ages and how religious competition through pluralism has led to stronger faith rather than state-imposed establishments.

In this episode, we speak with Daniel Di Martino about historical and contemporary postliberal policies on immigration and how they, combined with arguments for tariffs, would make working Americans considerably worse off.

Today, James and Tom talk about the rhetorical role the still critically dead Spanish authoritarian Francisco Franco plays in contemporary postliberal discourse. Then, Tom's computer dies, and he had to record the ending by himself with the inclusion of possible copyright violations that will probably get this channel permanently demonetized.

In today's episode, we spend some time talking to Dr. Dawn Eden Goldstein about American Jesuit priest Father Louis J. Twomey and his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. We also speak to her about Father Edward Dowling, another American Jesuits who dedicated his life to people with addictions, troubled marriages, and nervous disorders. Their examples provide an alternative vision for Catholicism in America that serves the stated ends of postliberalism but without all of the weird baggage.

In this week's episode, James talks about another example of a postliberal party that failed to secure a position within in government, the Brazilian Integralist Action Party. Plínio Salgado founded the party after a wealthy friend sponsored him to meet with Benito Mussolini in 1930. Salgado followed Mussolini's advice and created the Catholic authoritarian party in 1932 but ultimately could not exercise sufficient influence over the factions in the authoritarian regime of Getúlio Vargas.