Against geopolitical threats made by nonliberal competitors and planetary threats created by liberal modernity itself, the intellectual complaints of the unreconciled right looked more like a local nuisance than a source of serious concern. It was replaying themes and postures familiar since the 1890s, ever revived, ever discredited: an apocalyptic vision of Western decline, a false contrast of people and elites, inattention to government or policy, and a bootstrapping attempt to break out of liberal orthodoxy that found itself back in despite grand-sounding projects such as the pursuit of “metapolitics.”
Was society one community or composed itself of subcommunities? That is, was society unicellular or multicellular? Gierke thought society was multicellular. Together with the modern state and its laws, a national society had emerged out of many independent and long-standing communities.
I argued with people; I am not particularly agreeable, nor am I very polite; I say what I think. But somehow things were set straight again with a lot of people.
Reactionary Keynesianism would dominate the governing philosophies of Harry Truman, Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan and inform successive campaigns of mass death that would outlast even the Cold War.
