The Collapse of the Postwar Consensus: What Comes Next?

Defining the Postwar Consensus

• 💡 The Postwar Consensus refers to a set of ideas and rules that have governed Western civilization for approximately 80 years, emerging after World War II with the goal of preventing another global conflict.
• 🌍 Domestically, it includes the principle of secular nations with a hard separation of church and state, viewing nations as collections of individuals rather than groups, and promoting liberal democracy as the only legitimate system.
• ⚖️ Key tenets also encompass procedural justice, tolerance, and a redefinition of human rights as freedom to choose and freedom from harm, a shift from the earlier focus on freedom from government oppression.

Foreign Policy and Economic Shifts

• 🕊️ In foreign policy, the consensus aimed at the universalizing of liberal democracy (the "end of history") through nation-building and regime change, supported by international institutions like NATO, the UN, and the World Bank.
• 🌐 A rules-based international order was established to prevent war, particularly in the nuclear age, emphasizing respect for territorial boundaries and leading to consequences for violations.
• 🏦 Economically, the consensus evolved through Keynesianism and neoliberalism, generally favoring capitalist economies with significant social welfare states, and establishing the US dollar as the world's reserve currency.
• 📉 This led to hyper-financialization and a shift away from manufacturing, underpinned by a debt-based fiat system.

Reasons for the Collapse

• ⚠️ The absence of a major existential threat (like the Soviet Union) has led to questioning the necessity and cost of maintaining the existing order, especially for the United States.
• 🧐 Philosophical underpinnings, particularly Karl Popper's "Open Society and Its Enemies" and the paradox of tolerance, are being re-examined, with concerns that the concept of tolerance has been weaponized to silence dissent.
• 🎭 The consensus is seen as having depoliticized essential aspects of life (nation, family, religion) that provide meaning, leading to a sense of emptiness and a yearning for transcendence.
• 🚩 The smuggling of Marxist ideology and concepts like the oppressor-oppressed dynamic into the consensus has created internal contradictions, particularly the double standard applied to symbols of communism versus Nazism.

Potential Future Directions

• 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 There's a growing rejection of the idea that individuals cannot educate their children, with a call to reclaim the role of primary educators within families.
• ⚖️ A potential future direction involves re-emphasizing individual liberty alongside virtue, responsibility, and objective morality, moving closer to the principles of the American Revolution rather than the French Revolution.
• 🇺🇸 On foreign policy, a shift towards non-interventionism and prioritizing U.S. interests over ideological crusades is suggested, while acknowledging the need for a strong military for defense.
• 💰 Economically, a return to sound money and less government regulation is proposed, though the transition is acknowledged as complex and potentially disruptive.