Michael Hanby’s First Things article, “A More Perfect Absolutism,” is more relevant now than in 2016 when he wrote it. From Hanby’s article:
Despite our native suspicion of political power, Americans believe deeply in politics as such. Because we have no common faith, history, or culture outside the decision to found the nation on eighteenth-century philosophical principles, we have always looked to politics and the law to perform the work of faith, culture, and tradition in giving us an identity as a people. Politics is first philosophy for us. All real questions are political, and the liberal pretense of excluding questions of ultimate meaning from public deliberation only reinforces this habit of mind. We do not look or think beyond liberal order because for us there is no beyond. There be dragons.
Further Reading