Overview
- Field argues that under President Donald Trump, post-liberal thinkers abandoned tradition and scholarship for radicalism and vulgarity.
- Packer frames these ideologues as reactionaries whose lineage runs through Strom Thurmond, Joseph McCarthy, and Patrick Buchanan rather than Reagan-era libertarians.
- He reports that they reject liberalism and pluralism and celebrate Viktor Orbán as a governing model.
- Field describes recurring hostility toward women, sexual minorities, so-called woke Marxists, and the cultural elites of a supposedly soulless managerial class.
- Packer writes that Trump corrupted these intellectuals more than they influenced him, says their rise filled a vacuum created by broad public disenchantment, and urges liberals to build competing thinkers and institutions.