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A short but strong piece by Political Scientist Jason Blakely, who recently wrote a book about utilizing the insights of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre against scientism. I will definitely be reading that.

He discusses the right's use of identity politics in this past election and a way to get past its corrosive effect on both liberal and conservative politics. I found his use of Taylor here especially effective. Taylor emphasizes the dread that characterizes life in The Secular Age as a result of competing truth claims. This leads to a skepticism about everything that infects all of us, and has a ruinous effect on authentic pluralism in the long run.

I never once thought to draw a parallel between this and the current state of identity politics. It feels so obvious to me now. Just look around on Reddit and what do you see? A myriad of devout and passionate young people, almost always irreligious, centering their identities on a political-socioeconomic movement. There are (and forgive me if you aren't a reddit veteran and these groups are foreign to you): SJWs, Red Pillers, MGTOWs, socialists, atheists, Trumpers, white nationalists, Berni-bros, LGBT, and so on.

Where he loses me is his short solution:

> Instead of terrorizing each other with control of the state every four years, Americans might spend more time finding ways to accommodate a diversity of identities across the political spectrum. The federal government would have a role to play in securing certain rights, but local governments would also allow for different communities to live out their diverse ethics. Rather than trying to create a national moral monoculture through the courts (which misunderstands the meaning of our secular age) Mr. Taylor’s brand of multiculturalism seeks to protect a diversity of religious and spiritual options.

Yeah sounds nice but a bit naive and unfortunately too late. The culture war has been waged and dirtied by both sides and I think a peaceful pluralism, laudable it may be, is not going to be a solution acceptable to anyone. I do agree with him though that finding enclaves where we can be ourselves is a smart move whether that s a young gay person moving to a progressive city or someone like me who wants to settle down among moderate and conservative family-oriented people moving to the Midwestern suburbs.

At any rate, I did find this piece insightful and reflect on what kind of pluralism would be acceptable to me and any other Catholic. I come away thinking that a weaker federal government may actually be a good idea after all (I have been traditionally a big gov kind of guy) as being something a solid majority would agree to; and let the marketplace of ideas decide how the states would be run. I suppose that may have been what the author meant though.

>opposes border control, opposes the 'fundamental human right' of a nation to police its borders, deport illegal immigrants, or indeed for communities to have any control over those who would show up, en masse, in their communities

We do not, and I have made this clear several times.

>similar groups in Europe

Parties in Europe seem to do well, and Europe broadly is doing well. We however, have the added benefit of learning from their experiences, to refine our positions.

>prying the cross off

>gave up the distributism and subsidiarity

Hey, call foul all you'd like, we continue to appeal to real and faithful Catholics, Christians in general, and people of other faiths, particularly because they believe in the vision of Distributism, Subsidiarity, Right to Life, and Freedom of Religion that we support.

For example, John Medaille, a prominent writer on Distributism openly supports us, so claiming we oppose Distributism is a hard sell, to me.

I'll refer you to Christoper Lasch here.

But also, when you can get agreement between the likes of Nietzsche and Francis Fukuyama that the end-effect of a democratic culture is "men without chests" - people who only care about their own luxuries and pleasure to the exclusion of all else - we should probably pay attention. And that's a rather narcissistic kind of person they describe.

For anti-liberal books you may have to go far and wide, all the way back to Plato and Aristotle in some cases. I've read The Tyranny of Liberalism, which covers some of it, and these posts may have some hints; much of it comes from Thomistic thought which doesn't attack liberalism under that name. This one in particular is very apropro this year, as we see the Republican God embrace LBGT++ and gay marriage.

As for freedom of speech - we (in theory) have it in the USA, but as your examples show, it's not doing much for us. I think you've got the idea though - distributism is applied subsidiarity, and subsidiarity results in lots of authorities in different areas and spheres. So freedom of speech shouldn't be extended to prevent a Bishop from forbidding his priests to say Mass incorrectly, or to prevent you from throwing someone off your property who is yelling at you.

I do think that the correct response to "bad" speech is often going to be "good" speech. And sometimes good speech will result in death.

I should note that I think Aristotle is right about the size of a polity - about 100k max. I think distributism would lead towards that. More than that breeds all sorts of problems.

Oh boy...

Interestingly, the professor's daughter is a celibate lesbian Catholic. Eve Tushnet, author of Gay and Catholic

Exactly what I came here to say. /u/TheRandomWookie, for a very thorough and nuanced account of what liberalism even is, check out this book.

It seems the book Redeeming Economics by John D Mueller would be right up your alley.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LE0NVMS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Charles Coulombe has written a book about this very topic.

SJWs Always Lie. Particularly the part about Churchianity.