Raging Against Modernity
Cato Podcast
Cato Institute
4.5 • 979 Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2026
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A new ideology is gaining influence on the American right: postliberalism. In this episode, Cato Institute economist Ryan Bourne speaks with Phil Magness of the Independent Institute about what postliberalism is, where it came from, and why it matters in today’s political debates.
They explore the key thinkers and personalities behind the postliberal movement, its critique of classical liberalism, and its views on executive power, the American founding, constitutionalism, and contemporary public policy. The conversation examines how postliberal ideas are shaping modern conservatism and what they could mean for the future of American politics.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Cato podcast. I'm Ryan Bourne, Cato's RF and Shaft Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics. |
| 0:10.1 | And today we're going to talk about an intellectual movement, an ideology, if you will, that we're hearing more about in recent years. |
| 0:15.7 | And that is post-liberalism. And there's nobody better to discuss all that than economic historian and political |
| 0:21.4 | scientist Phil Magnus. He's the David J. Thoreau Chair in Political Economy at the Independence Institute. |
| 0:28.2 | And that's because he's just written a paper entitled The Marxists of Monochism, The New Rights |
| 0:32.8 | Post-Liberal Illusion. So, Phil, thanks so much for coming on to the Cato podcast. |
| 0:37.2 | Thank you for having me. |
| 0:38.7 | Okay, well, let's start with a really basic question for those are kind of uninitiated in what |
| 0:43.9 | post-liberalism is. So what is post-liberalism? Yes, it's an intellectual movement that has |
| 0:49.8 | appeared on the political right. I'd see in the last 10 years or so, give or take. And what they |
| 0:55.5 | basically claim is that all of the problems that they have with modernity, and these are both |
| 1:00.3 | real and imagined problems derived from the political philosophy of liberalism, which they |
| 1:05.3 | trace to really the late 18th century, the emergence of the Enlightenment, kind of the successors of the ideals of John Locke, which as we know are very deeply embedded in American political philosophy. |
| 1:18.6 | And they view this as an aberration against what they saw as the natural course of things in human history, a society built around collective institutions, they see the family, |
| 1:30.1 | the church, and the state, often represented by a monarchy, as the stabilizing factors of |
| 1:37.3 | human history. And they view liberalism as a rebellion against that. But they also claim that |
| 1:43.8 | liberalism has the seeds of |
| 1:45.8 | its own demise in it. So it's almost like a Marxist type of a way of thinking that it undermines |
| 1:52.9 | itself by corrupting the very same institutions that it purported to replace and topple. And as a |
| 1:58.9 | result of this, society will evolve into a post-liberal direction, |
| 2:02.6 | which is like nature correcting its course, bringing itself back to almost a resurgence of the |
| 2:09.4 | feudal society that preceded the liberal era. So it seems as if within that there's a kind of |
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