Am I getting this right in terms of like, there's almost the danger is that the respectable folks or people who are making this more respectable have kind of just, open the door to all kinds of positions that were just not acceptable at all 15, 20 years ago.

I think so.

I think that's exactly right.

Actually, you described it very well.

Another thing, there's a couple other things I see.

There's two things.

One is there are lots of people in the middle who have this no enemy to my right mentality mentality.

So, Tom, maybe you can add on here in terms of what you see about this need for identifying the problem or focusing on a specific cause.

Um, So help me get a sense of why should the average person care about this if seemingly it's such a niche pastime of a very small contingent of people?

All political movements that are successful are like that.

They go from the top down.

They're a small group that's highly networked, highly connected.

It's just like – that's just how all these things – that's how fascism started.

That's how – That's how communism started.

I mean, you should be.

cop.

That's

big.

And they also are not interested in the empirical literature on that as well.

And really, the way after when I read this stuff, my takeaway was we just always, the people, those of us who are really hardcore into the faith have always been a minority and we've always had to push.

Yeah.

To create this enclave, build this enclave that is the salt of the earth, right? You want to be the salt of the earth, you want to be a city on the hill? Well, the people that are really into that project have been a salt of the earth, but they've never been a huge majority, even if they've had institutional power.

Because the thing is, before...

Yeah,

So I want to begin by asking you to talk about this concept of political tribalism, especially in recent decades.

Oh, yeah.

So, you know, I remember at some point when I was in grad school studying philosophy, one of the professors said, uh... brought up this canadian intellectual uh... marshall mcclellan and uh... after he brought him up by i look them up and look at your books and articles uh... and one thing i i cut from reading this marshall mcclellan he's the one who's famous for saying this idea of like the medium is the message that any deals with media and its effect on us and uh... uh... they're the more popular book they came out of this idea away from by Neil Postman.

Um, he, uh, he wrote this book called amusing ourselves to death.

That was supposed to based on the ideas of McLuhan.

And, you know, one, one thing in my own personal opinion, when I was reading McLuhan was he was kind of a sloppy thinker.

And I, I think he said a lot of things that probably aren't true.

Can you briefly comment on that?

What does the failure look like, Tom?

Well, uh, in the book we, we go through all these various historical instances of, um, previous, uh, attempts at, at something like post-liberalism by Catholic, uh, uh, people involved in politics.

And, um, and we say, like...

I mean, well, the thing is, is from a Catholic standpoint, any kind of political movement should at least...

You know, there's room for debate about, like, the n- nuts and bolts politics among Catholics, right? But, you know, some people are, uh, you know, um...

And i- it's not that, um, like, for instance, not, it's not the case that monarchy is always inherently bad, right? Um, that you need to have a republican form of government even as a matter of principle from the standpoint of Catholic social ethics.

Um, but from the standpoint of prudence, I think, with the modern state, um, some form of, uh, representative democracy is probably the on- the, the only...

[laughs] Just-

What is it, Thomas? Good evening to you.

Oh, hi.

Uh, uh, good evening as well.

Um, hi, hi, John.

Um, thank you for having me on.

Uh, post liberalism, well, uh, the post liberalism that we address in the book is a specific type of post liberalism.

There was a Protestant variety, um, that was a theological, um, school of thought in starting like 1990s.

How does that knit together with a s- with a, uh, the big man? What, what, d- how do they come together?