“By definition, postliberalism can’t and won’t succeed in dismantling the liberal order without leadership that displays an unusually high tolerance for transgression. And so it selects for leaders who have demonstrated that tolerance in their private conduct—criminals, perverts, con men, predatory sociopaths of all stripes. When people like me call Trump’s government a “kakistocracy,” it’s not an idle insult. It’s an acknowledgment of Millman’s point that populists regard conformity to rules of propriety as per se evidence of weak resolve and so they turn instead to the least fit people in society to lead them.”

“If you find that Nietzschean “will to power” logic remarkably anti-Christian for a movement of right-wingers that loves to trumpet its supposed devotion to Jesus, I think Millman has squared the circle there correctly too. “Once manliness has been reestablished, we can discuss whether a real man is someone with the courage to follow Jesus of Nazareth in all things, or whether Christianity is ultimately a religion for slaves and women that a real man would have nothing to do with,” he imagines a typical Trumpist Christian saying. “For now … the important thing is to recognize manliness, support it, and never be cowed by moralizers into backing down from that support.”’

“That idea, that traditional pillars of conservatism like Christianity and the Constitution are unsuited to solving the supposed cultural crisis in which we find ourselves, recurs throughout postliberal thinking. When authoritarians talk about “knowing what time it is,” that’s precisely what they mean. Perhaps we’ll come back to separation of powers and the Sermon on the Mount someday when the left is less of a threat, they allow. But for now, at a moment that calls for utmost ruthlessness, we need men.”