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A few thoughts in response to the Vermeule piece. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/common-good-constitutionalism/609037/
All meaningful constitutionalism is "common good" constitutionalism. Traditional liberal democratic constitutions consider individual human rights to be in public interest: democratic liberty and constitutional limits ARE ends-in-themselves, integral parts of the common good.
Vermeule's overt celebration here of "THE RULER" and authority are patently anti-democratic, illiberal, and, dare I say it, un-American (even for people who don't care an inch about originalism).
His ideas about the common good are more complicated.
His ideas about the common good are more complicated.
Reocons like Vermeule, Deneen, Ahmari, typically operate within a very narrow, often theological, conception of the common good (or "The Common Good"), which typically involves a singular + settled conception of The Good Life. In such a view, power ought to aim for this Good.
Vermeule's piece bears this out. His view of what counts as in public interest is awfully pinched. He talks of the "traditional family" for example; "liberty" and "rights" are in scare quotes; he can’t understand why sexual freedom might be good for anyone, etc.
Such a narrow account of the good is inconsistent with basic principles of liberal democratic constitutionalism. LD doesn't abandon the common good, but it DOES insist on making room for a large (not unlimited) plurality of understandings of what counts as good, or as a good life
and it makes room for a wide variety of ways of life. And yes, liberal democratic constitutionalism values individual choice and variety as essential dimensions of morality and the human condition.
Usually, when the Reocons talk about liberalism being dead, promoting "illiberal legalism," etc, they are making an extremely savvy and effective rhetorical choice. It allows them to tap into all the anti-Democratic, anti-liberal partisanship of the right, while masking...
the fact that they are at the same time attacking the liberal democratic underpinnings of the American constitutional order (including "originalism"). In other words, if you're not paying attention, Vermeule sounds like just another conservative who can't stand liberals...
but he's actually operating against the whole idea of participatory liberal democracy. He gets to amp up the base and at the same time veil-over the threat he poses to the constitutional order that they too (presumably? still? maybe?) hold dear.
To be fair, Vermeule is far less hand-wavey here than, say, Patrick Deneen. Vermeule is pretty explicit, it seems to me, about his rejection of constitutional limits. I think this is very frightening. I guess he sees it as his moment.
That Vermeule's essay seems at all interesting makes it clear that it continues to be important for the left to mount a strong, principled, values-based defense of liberal democracy. No taking it for granted, no flinching in face of uncomfortable "moral talk" from the right.
I do some of this values-based work towards the end of my piece on the reactionary misreadings of liberal neutralism in @BulwarkOnline: https://thebulwark.com/what-the-reactionary-right-gets-dead-wrong-about-modern-liberal-democracy/
And I gesture towards the Reocons’ authoritarian moral endgame in this piece for @NiskanenCenter
Meet the Reocons: https://www.niskanencenter.org/meet-the-reocons/
Meet the Reocons: https://www.niskanencenter.org/meet-the-reocons/
Note: I didn’t include Vermeule as a Reocon in either piece because I didn’t yet have a solid sense of what he was about. The Atlantic piece clears that up considerably.
More on the reactionary conservative movement undergirding Trumpism here: https://twitter.com/HDrochon/status/1235865629569114116
