Liberalism vs Post-Liberalism

I was delighted to host this conversation with two law school students, one Protestant and one Catholic, who identify with religious and political post-liberalism. The former (speaker 1) wants a Protestant confessional state, and the other (speaker 2) is sympathetic to a Catholic integralist state. This transcript will not mention their names. We hope this conversation will be the first of many on the topic of liberalism versus post-liberalism. IRD remains committed to its founding principles of religious freedom, human rights and democracy for all people.

Mark Tooley: Welcome everybody to this very unusual lunch hosted by the Institute on Religion and Democracy. I am Mark Tooley, president of the IRD. We’ve been trying to organize a conversation like this for a long, long time and have not been successful. But I’m delighted that finally we have.

More people are not here, but it makes the conversation we’re having all the more special for those who are here. And we’re doing an audio recording that we may transcribe and publish, but without names, so as to protect our students and to make sure everyone can speak candidly and freely.

As you’ll see from the banner behind us, the IRD founded an initiative called the New Wiggery several years ago to advocate for classical liberty or what some people may call classical liberalism, rooted in Dutch-Anglo Protestant history, and we’ve been having those conversations now for several years responding to post liberalism, especially within some corners of Christianity, but we’d like to hear from other perspectives, as I’ve shared with several of you, five or six or seven years ago, I began encountering very intelligent, educated young Catholic men here in DC who self identified as “Catholic Integralists.”

I was, at first, very perplexed, surprised and impressed by the ferocity of their beliefs, but also concerned about their direction. And I wondered if there would be a Protestant equivalent of Integralism. Eventually, and soon there was, some of the Protestant post-liberals who share an integralist perspective call themselves Christian nationalists.

Sometimes they call themselves simply ‘political Protestants.’ Many of them quite openly advocate for a Christian confessional state. There was a book that I’m sure all of you are familiar with that came out almost two years ago now called The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe that makes a reformed argument for a reformed confessional state.

That’s probably the most serious literature now available from that perspective. Of course on the Catholic integralist side, many books make those arguments. I was particularly interested in finding a female advocate for this line of thought, whether Catholic or Protestant, and was very delighted to finally find someone.

We had a law student here in the office a few weeks ago who said he had a very intelligent classmate who has this perspective and introduced us by email, and she has generously joined us to share her thoughts and has brought along another classmate.

They are both going into their second year in law school. We’ll invite her to share her thoughts first and then her classmate and then everyone can respond by asking questions or sharing their own thoughts. So it’s not a very structured or formal conversation, but perhaps this conversation will lead to a larger and more formal event.

Thank you so much for joining us, and we’ve been looking forward to it.

Speaker 1: I guess I do have the reputation of being one of the sole ‘Reformed integralists,’ specifically female Reformed integralist types. I don’t see either as confined to a specific gender or belief system. Reform ideology fits nicely with a lot of integralism.

My colleague and classmate, both of us are at law school. I’m a big fan of [Adrian Vermuele]. I saw him speak at one of the first post-liberal conferences in 2020.

I kind of came to this from reading Notre Dame Professor Patrick Deneen of Why Liberalism Failed. It was transformative in how I thought about these questions. My reasoning for being post-liberal boils down to three main points: I think it’s important to have humility, tradition, love of other people, of countrymen, and logic.

It makes logical sense that if we know these things to be true, that we would want them to be true and widespread. So, for humility, I think that when we’re trying to draw a delineated line between what things should be codified in law versus not codified in law, I often think we draw an arbitrary distinction specifically on biblical truths that we think should be codified in law.

Again, I think it’s arbitrary. I think that when you arbitrarily set a line of which things should be mandated by law versus which things should just be confined to the truth that we talk about in church. I feel like that’s kind of a hubris that I don’t want to fall into saying which laws I think are good and profitable for other people to have imposed on them and which ones I don’t.

My second point is, why would I not share things that I believe to be true? Why would I not share the definition of harm that I actually have? There’s more than physical harm that can harm someone, and we should have those things also people protected from. There’s a great Christian author, I don’t think she’s at all post-liberal, but she wrote a book called Gay Girl, Good God, and she talks about how a Christian should never send a friend that they’re having over for coffee outside their door if they know there’s a snake outside.

She analogized this to the LGBTQ agenda and things like that, of  ‘why do you not speak truth and love to your friends who are struggling with this really serious, really grave, issue?’ She herself kind of felt like she was sent into the snake pit. I think it’s really important for us to acknowledge that we have many Christian friends who kind of remained mum on the topic.

Lastly, logic. This is actually what brought me to Christianity in my college years, was thinking about how human rights are really an arbitrary construction without God, right? There’s no reason why we should have a sense of human dignity that’s confined only to humans, to all humans, male, female, all races, if there’s not the image of God that’s imposed on every person.

That makes us different from other mammals, that makes us different from animals, that also makes us capable of having reason and judgment and discernment and ability for self-government. So, I think with that foundation, unless you’re going to come up with some noble lie to say why human beings deserve rights, all human beings deserve rights, it doesn’t really make sense to me, or where the bright line would be, over why would you not construct a government based upon God’s law if you’re already constructing it based on a very religious concept of human beings are equal in dignity and worth, that they’re made in God’s image. Which, I think, liberalism ultimately does pretend to rest on.

I’ve had classmates who are full atheists. I asked them, “Why do human beings have human rights?” Because they’re made in the Image of God – but you don’t believe in God. I think we need to be full in our beliefs and fully logically extend them out.

MT: You self-identify as a “Genevan Ecclesiocrat”?

Speaker 1: Yes, that’s the label that I was given by my Catholic friends who did not want me to call myself an Integralist. I don’t believe in Our Lady of Guadalupe. I’m an avid opposer to Catholicism, specifically on the Marian dogmas.

So instead of that, I donned the Calvinist Geneva Ecclesiocrat label, which I have tried to take the sting out of by accepting happily. 

MT: Excellent. I have more questions for you, but maybe we should hear from your classmate first.

Speaker 2: I mostly want to honestly ask some questions and just hear from all of you. But, just to give a little bit of background of how I kind of got into these debates. I went to Notre Dame for undergrad. A lot of my friends were big fans of Deneen.

And a lot of friends are big fans of Phil Munoz. And so there’s a kind of a fundamental divide there. So I was hearing a lot of these debates about liberalism and post-liberalism, whether Deneen was right that liberalism has failed because it has succeeded, whether Munoz was right and we should really just kind of recommit ourselves to the ideals of the American founding.

I became interested in these debates when I was in college. Something that came out of a lot of that, as I was thinking about what was motivating these people is kind of their starting point was that the way that we can achieve eudaimonia, and this is a fundamentally Aristotelian point, is through kind of localist, thick communities.

We need to revive an emphasis on those, and I think the question came out of, kind of from that starting point. What would be a better way of protecting and enabling those communities? Is it kind of a post-liberal view, where we try to really push hard for recognizing the common good, implementing the kind of dictates of natural law in our polity, or is it better to recommit ourselves to classical liberalism?

What I’m beginning with is kind of the starting point: those localist “thick communities” are essential for human flourishing. I think that’s kind of a point that comes from Alasdair MacIntyre, who was seeing that the Enlightenment was kind of corrosive of all thick human bonds essential for human flourishing and it was corrosive of a strong, religious identity.

It was corrosive of anything that was defining you in any way that wasn’t just self definition. The response to that is to introduce an emphasis on these localistic communities where religion can flourish, where families can flourish, and where culture can flourish. But I think then the real question that I’m interested in is, again, “what framework protects those communities better?”

Is it liberalism? Is it classical liberalism? Or is it post-liberalism? Someone like [Harvard Law Professor Adrian] Vermeule would pretty ardently say that it is post-liberalism that we need. He wrote a review of Why Liberalism Failed called Integration from Within. And he agrees with Deneen on the diagnosis. He says that Deneen has gotten it right.

Liberalism has failed because it has succeeded. But then he [Vermeule] kind of disagrees with Deneen when it comes to the prescription. Because Dineen is saying it kind of sounds like The Benedict Option. It kind of sounds like Rod Dreher. We need to kind of withdraw ourselves, focus on these small communities. Maybe set up shop in Steubenville, Ohio. Just kind of focus on what we have here. Focus on committing ourselves to our faith. Then we will serve as a light to the nations, and we’ll be able to do what makes for human flourishing.

But I think what someone like Sohrab Ahmari has pointed out, uncharitably, when he was debating with David French is, there’s kind of been this rise of “wokeism,” which is a frightening development because the consensus was if you insist on classical liberal principles, even if it’s kind of elevating autonomy as the highest principle.

Still if you’re able to insist on the protections of the Bill of Rights, insist on religious liberty, insist on government not intruding on these communities existing, then these communities would be able to exist, there would be a space for human flourishing, and then kind of from the ground up there would be this kind of rebirth of eudaimonia and flourishing in the states.

But I think what the post-liberals have pointed out is there has been this rise in wokeism which is fundamentally illiberal because it’s trying to impose their views on the religious believers in the states today. So Rod Dreher begins The Benedict Option by saying that ever since Obergefell v. Hodges, anyone who holds to the traditional biblical teaching on the identity of marriage is now considered a bigot.

When you have people who believe that autonomy is primary and that they should be allowed to do whatever they want with their bodies. There are downstream effects. What has happened is that there’s now a terrifying move to impose those views on traditional, religious believers at large.

There’s this view that those who hold to a traditional, biblical view of marriage and of other kinds of life issues are bigots. So I think the post-liberals look at that. They see what they want. Kind of the other side is doing. And they’re saying, “this is the inevitable consequence of liberalism.”

It will inevitably lead to illiberalism and the imposition of this kind of maximized view of the principle of autonomy on all believers. And as a result, there’s actually no space for traditional, religious believers to believe as they want. As a result, there’s no space for eudaimonia and for these thick communities because the only way that flourishing can happen is in a thick Christian religious community.

As a result, the post-liberals are saying we need to work and fight against that and introduce natural law and common good as the guideposts for the governance of the states because liberalism has failed because it has become illiberal. And there’s now no space for localist communities to flourish.

The post-liberal contention is that there’s no way to protect those communities if we just emphasize liberalism. I think what maybe the liberal defender might respond with is this woke movement is illiberal. The problem is they’re deviating from principles of liberalism.

And so really we need to recommit ourselves to classical liberalism, recommit ourselves to the principles of neutrality, as David French has done. Once we recommit ourselves to the protections of the Bill of Rights, we can see that actually these communities that are infused with religious faith, that emphasize culture and religion, can actually still flourish.

The problem is there has been this deviation away from those liberal principles. We just need to return to them.

I think the post-liberal response is that it is just not enough. We’ve gone too far. Liberalism has devolved to this point of illiberalism and now we just need to respond because the idea that a kind of moral neutrality exists in the political sphere for the post-liberal, they just don’t buy that.

They think that any kind of fundamental contention that is advanced in the public sphere has some moral valence to it. Post-liberals want to call it out and say, no matter what there is, there is some substantive view of the good that’s being advanced. When someone is making an argument in the public square, we need to name that, accept that, and be very open about what we’re trying to do.

Which is, to put it bluntly, to impose their view of the common good. Their substantive view of the good. And neutrality has failed. They say neutrality was never really an option because none of these claims that are being advanced are truly neutral.

They all have some kind of moral valence. We need to be up front about that because if we don’t do that. Then the possibilities for eudaimonia, the possibilities for human flourishing, are not there. And that’s what we need to focus on. Post-liberalism is the better way of defending it.

That’s the contention. I don’t really necessarily have a side one way or the other, but I think I’m very interested in that question of how do we defend these religious communities that are under attack? And is it recommitting ourselves to the principles of liberalism? Or are we past that point?

We need to try as much as we can to bring about this new view. This kind of post-liberal vision.

MT: Thank you. Let’s go first to anyone else here who has a question or comment.

Questioner 1: What does post-liberalism propose to change about how our society operates? I keep hearing about moral values, which sounds great, but is it a specific religion, or is it morality in general?

Speaker 1: I think that this is the biggest criticism levied against it. I would also confess that I’m not a big fan of any of the proposed options necessarily. I do think they’re all probably better than liberalism, but I think that there’s a range, right?

This is why there’s so many names that float around Integralism versus just generally post-liberal and Reformed people. Reformed people like [Stephen] Wolfe and Doug Wilson, like Christian nationalism, are community-based, taking power away from the federal government and giving it all to the states.

And letting them have a really robust Christian social teaching. I actually think there could be an argument that the Bill of Rights supports this. I think [Speaker 2] and I disagree a little bit on if the Bill of Rights actually supports these things, but I think you could make that argument through the Tenth Amendment.

Then there’s the more Catholic view – which I actually agree with more – baptizing the administrative state in some sense, right? Of using the kind of large, federal government that people are already accustomed to that is almost needed in this world. That’s complex, big, and diverse that we have this country using to institute these things from top down, right?

I think almost akin to the way you look at Obergefell v. Hodges happened, right? It imposed this big moral agenda on the entire country, obviously going the opposite way. But to do that for things that we know are true if not I think according to a specific denomination or religion, I think most would agree that natural law principles would be the guiding force.

Speaker 2: I am a Catholic, so I hear a lot about the natural law debates, but what I might suggest is the set of moral values that should be guiding this move would be the morals and the values that we get from traditional biblical teaching. I think that’s the fundamental contention that Rod Dreher begins with is that there is now this divide between what is legal and what the Bible teaches. I would say there’s a consensus in what the Bible teaches.

It’s pretty clear that it teaches certain things about human sexuality. I’m coming at this from a socially conservative perspective, not reaching the other issues, but I think it teaches certain things about human sexuality quite clearly. That’s something that all Christians can agree on.

So I think it is broadly a Christian approach and it’s a Christian set of values influenced by the scriptures that I think all Bible-believing Protestants and faithful Catholics can agree on.

MT: Any other questions or comments? 

Bill: Thank you both for coming. Please correct me if I’m misrepresenting or misunderstanding it, but putting forward moral authority over self-governance, which seems to be the main criticism of liberalism, is that by delegating too much power to the people or through democratic institutions, liberal institutions that it creates this threat to morality.

If you’re reconstructing the state or government, as I believe you’re proposing, would there be any place for any democratic involvement of self-government? Because if you were to say the law is based off of natural law or the moral law, why would citizens have any right to govern?

How would they govern themselves? How would there be self government?

Speaker 1: I don’t think either of us disagree generally with the idea of democracy. Democracy clearly precedes liberalism and I don’t think that it was a necessary outgrowth of democracy to have liberalism.

When I’m saying liberalism, I’m talking about freedom, when the aim is freedom. I like how Sutter put it: the aim is autonomy. As Christians we know that freedom is not an end in itself. Freedom can only be achieved through Christ and it’s through being a slave to Christ that you become free, right?

You become not a slave to sin, you become a slave to Christ, and that’s where true freedom is. So I think that’s why I think they’re wrong on their face, right? That to achieve freedom in the way that they are is a self-defeating thing. But I don’t think that though it is associated with democracy, I don’t think it’s like a necessary implication of it.

Democracy can exist without liberalism, especially in these kinds of smaller communities that we’re talking about. But I see the bigger problem, especially dealing with peers who even identify as conservative or Christian, where they’re just too afraid to impose their moral beliefs on the general populace even though we do live in a system of self-government, right?

The idea that someone could, with a straight face and a very smart person, could say, “yes, I think abortion is actual murder of an innocent human being, but I don’t want to impose that view on everyone else.” I think that that is kind of the crux of liberalism as I see it. That’s wrong.

I think you can be democratic and have that end toward the common good and think, “no, I think that this is murder.” And I think I do need to impose that on my neighbors because these people are dying. And I have a responsibility to protect my brothers and sisters in this country.

Speaker 2: I think it’s mostly right, although I will say that’s another one of the main criticisms of post-liberalism because you have Vermeule writing I think it was called Beyond Originalism. He changed the name, but one of the criticisms is that he comes across as quite paternalistic in it.

He says the state kind of knows what’s better for its citizens than the citizens do. But once the state imposes these views, the citizens are going to learn. There’s this teaching effect, this pedagogical effect that the state will have on its citizens.

I would suggest that what the state does, what laws are passed, that does have a pedagogical effect on culture at large. I do think you see that with Obergefell. Once this is passed, then it’s a settled question.

It is a pretty serious criticism, and I think it gets at the point that the diagnosis might be right, but the prescription that post-liberalism gives has not really been worked out. If I were to say why I’m not fully post-liberal, that’s the reason, because I don’t think anyone has worked out a good prescription.

Some are attempting it. You see some elements of it in the New Right movement of today, but that needs to be worked out better before we can commit to it wholeheartedly.

Speaker 1: Okay, but I think you’re not taking into account that Augustine talks about this in The City of God, right?

There has to be a constrained measure, and then you can have a freer measure, right? Even our founders agreed with this, right? John Adams famous quote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People” it is “wholly inadequate to the government of any other,” right?

Right. If we were a moral and religious people – which I think empirically we’re not – you could have freer range but I come from a foster adoptive family and, when kids who are abused come into a new family, the worst thing that you can give them is absolute freedom.

The best thing you can give them is pretty strict constraints about what’s right and what’s wrong and people actually gravitate toward it if you don’t have those constraints. It’s actually uncomfortable, right? There’s this new social science study. I’m not gonna quote it perfectly, but they were looking at the anxiety differences between kids who grew up in liberal families versus kids who grew up in conservative families.

Rates of anxiety are actually higher among women all the time versus men. But, most notably, the males who were raised in liberal families had higher rates of anxiety than females raised in conservative families. Just to show like the giant chasm of difference. Obviously this is reading into the study, but being raised in a kind of more constrictive way versus a much freer way.

I don’t think that freedom is an end in itself, but I also do think that there could be this transitional method back to democracy.

Questioner B: As I was listening to you, I keep going back to the question of, what’s the problem you’re trying to solve?

What is it that you’re after? What’s the fear? And I hear you coming back to after Obergefell, then we’re called bigots in that. It strikes me as sort of the creation of a martyrdom story in order to justify your self identity, right? Christians have done this for a long time.

If you go back to early Christianity, you read martyrologies. A lot of them are made up after the fact  in order to build a Christian identity in contrast to a larger state that overpowers them. Right? So does it come from a fear of losing power or does it come from a real genuine concern about something?

When you say it’s about pursuing eudaimonia and pursuing the good life or common good. Is that because you fear that your perspective of common good is waning?

Speaker 2: No, I think that’s totally fair. To be transparent with you, when I read The Benedict Option, it did seem like Rod Dreher was painting this in a dreary and drab kind of way to try to set up this problem and then once there is the serious problem, well, now I have my solution.

One fear is that Christians are not able to raise their families in the way that their faith demands of them. Because, at least in some instances, it’s quite serious. In Massachusetts, for instance, it’s being challenged, but requirements for Christian foster parents to basically sign on to taking their kids to a pride parade. That’s going farther than saying if this child comes out as gay, then you have to still love them. You can’t just give them back up.

That’s one thing. I think it’s a fair requirement, but to require Christian foster parents to take their foster child, or adopted child to a pride parade is going too far. That’s the fear.

This is why I’m not going all-in on post-liberalism. Really, all I need to do is strengthen religious liberty protections.

Questioner B: But it’s being challenged, right? So our liberal democracy has come up with ways to preserve that. I guess I always hear, well, this certain court case went through, people call us bigots, well, go back 30 years and someone would say, well, the Christian majority calls me a sinner.

It’s the same thing, right? There’s shifting social norms, right? I just don’t buy the argument that Christians can’t raise their families the way they want to. I’ve never seen it, honestly. And I’ve been in the military. I live in a pluralist environment, right?

Speaker 1: I’m from Washington. But, even ten years ago, they were mandating Planned Parenthood style sex education that you couldn’t opt out of even if you had a religious objection.

Parents who used to be foster care families, it’s not the same as Massachusetts, but a month ago they were let go from the program because they wouldn’t sign on that you couldn’t attend an LGBTQ non-affirming church while you had foster kids in your home. And that you would have to affirm their gender.

Obviously those aren’t their own kids, but my parents did treat their foster kids like they were their kids and ended up adopting three of them, so they did become [their] kids. I also see in California specifically that dads lose rights, specifically dads in the examples that have come up, but dads are losing rights over their kids in paternity custody battles if they won’t adhere to this transgender ideology that’s usually more [likely to be] supported by the mom.

I also think abortion laws if men have a say in it could be if their girlfriend or wife wants to kill their child in the womb. They don’t have a say over that, and in a lot of states that’s legal. Even though we have won court cases, it’s just gone back to the states. And even the most Pro-Life candidate in the race right now says that that’s exactly how it should be.

I do think that there’s a big encroachment on these things. And I don’t think we maybe even realized how much of an encroachment it is. But public education is a great place to look, and even the mandates on what is taught to these kids, even if you are going to do homeschool style education.

I don’t think that you were accusing us of sophistry, but I did come to this from the abortion perspective, but also from the perspective of seeing detransitioners come and speak at Columbia when I was an undergrad, and, talking about their experiences with these things, and just actually thinking, I think kids are really the big line. Adults want to be free and do what they want but then when it comes to this kids issue, you kind of get stuck. Let’s take the trans kids example, it’s very hard to walk this line and say it’s not okay for you to medically transition your child because we think that’s evil, wrong and bad.

But we can’t say that in a liberal democracy, right? Because if we said that, we’d have to actually say that that’s not okay for adults to do either. But we don’t want to say that. We want to give adults their full autonomy, that they can do whatever they want. But I do think we have certain strictures, and I do think that we should actually use our Christian conscience and know that there are truths that we can’t harm the human body, even if it’s your own body.

We shouldn’t let people commit suicide, we shouldn’t let people mutilate their body in any way. I don’t see why adults versus children are any different. I also think when you take that argument to the logical extreme, it doesn’t make any sense, right? You kind of have to be on one side or the other on that issue.

I don’t know if that makes sense. I don’t try to summarize that, but, yeah, I would say it’s not going back at all. I think if you look at most of the post-liberal writings, I think most of them actually disagree with underlying tenets of the founding. I think that they see those things as pretty liberal, even pre-existing, like John Stuart Mill, but I don’t think the jurisprudence of a hundred years ago would work.

Some of those readings are a little bit forced if you look at Supreme Court history that I agree with, right? It’s a little hard to justify – the Amish kids case is coming to mind – specifically Wisconsin v. Yoder I think it’s a little forced reading to be able to say states have this freedom of religion.

The Bill of Rights either applies to them or it doesn’t apply to them, and we kind of go back and forth on that. So, I don’t think a hundred years ago is like a perfect model. I don’t think 200 years is a perfect model of anything like that.

Post-liberal has the word post in it for a reason. I do think it’s a new thing.

Speaker 2: I think what you’re identifying is one of the problems, which is to say that a lot of the post-liberals are suggesting only federal solutions, without looking at state solutions. It might be an interesting experiment to try to go back to the jurisprudence of a hundred years ago.

I think that might be something someone like Clarence Thomas would be supportive of. Trying to rework the doctrines surrounding substantive due process and then maybe incorporation. But, realistically, that’s not going to happen.

Speaker 2: I think it’s an interesting idea, but I would suggest it’s not workable.

MT: Michael, a final question?

Michael: On the note of jurisprudence of yore, a lot of post-liberal and Integralist thinkers tend to harken back not just a hundred, two hundred years ago, but a thousand or so. They tend to draw a lot of their justification, arguments, and imagery from a time when there were real, existing, historical, contemporary Confessional Christian states and yet they seem not to draw at all upon the actual, practical examples of governance from that period.

Why do you think that Integralists are so ready to draw on arguments from, say, the Holy Roman Empire, but not to draw on their example?

Speaker 2: That’s a good question. I’m not as familiar with the arguments that are being made from a thousand years ago. When it comes to Vermeule and what he’s doing with common good constitutionalism, he’s trying to expand the historical scope of what we’re looking at.

If we’re looking at history, we’re not only going to English common law, we’re going farther back than that. And I think a contention is that, and some have identified this, is like you actually do need to go farther back if you’re gonna try to actually be an originalist. You actually should go farther back than that because this was all drawing on a larger framework.

What I would suggest is that, doing that sort of argument that you’re saying is actually consistent with some of these people who style themselves as post-liberal but pro-American founding. That’s a divide that I see. Some who are post-liberal totally reject the American founding as not good at all.

Some want to make the argument that we are post-liberal but that means that actually we think that there’s an illiberal or non-liberal reading of the constitution that’s possible. And so we have this system of governance. We’re not going to overturn that. But, we’re going to look farther back to illuminate what these words mean and what it means, but without actually reworking our system of governance.

That’s why we’re not going to look to the way that the Holy Roman Empire was governed to advance our theories. 

Speaker 1: I’m not against the Josh Hammer position on that either. I know such little history. I’m bad on especially Catholic history. I studied Mongolian history in college, so really useful stuff.

I think that using the preamble is what the common good constitutionalist type, or originalist, what they call themselves, try to do. I think that’s a fine transition approach to say there’s a common good element in our preamble, and that should shape how we form our laws and our decisions.

I don’t think we can survive if we keep having a full bench on the Supreme Court, and the best we can do is say, “Oh, we’ll send the question on if we can murder millions of children back to the states so that they get to decide.” So that’s really what pushes me to this.

MT: Finally, before we let you leave, is Protestant Integralism compatible with Catholic Integralism? We’re besties. 

Speaker 1: We’re such good friends. It’s socially compatible. I think we would say it’s compatible because I think we believe we’re in communion with Catholics.

Catholics probably don’t think it’s compatible with us because they’re not in communion with us. I would see that we’d be heretics in your state. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. What I was suggesting earlier when it comes to the set of moral values we should use to guide our thinking was really drawn from the scriptures, which we can all agree on. I would say it’s the set of moral values we can gather from that.

Where there is the convergence in belief between traditional Protestantism and Catholicism, I think that’s where there is agreement. And I think it could be reconciled along those lines.

MT: On that semi-upbeat note, we’ll conclude with appreciation to both of you. Our first post-liberal conversation at the IRD, historic moment. Thank you so much.