The Failed Revolution
We live in a time of fragmentation. The old left–right model cannot explain why libertarian tech moguls, trans-rights activists, traditionalist Catholics, and homesteading bodybuilders all seem to be at war, not only with each other, but with reality itself.
Liberalism was sold as the “end of history”, a universal settlement that would reconcile freedom and order, prosperity and equality, individuality and community. In truth, it was a brief experiment, lasting for barely an eye-blink in the span of human civilisation. It burned brightly for two centuries, flickered after the Cold War, and has now winked out, leaving only the glow of its dying embers.
Its architects imagined a permanent centre, a consensus grounded in rational procedure, neutral institutions, and moral pluralism. But liberalism was built on metaphysical sand. Once its shared assumptions collapsed, there was nothing to hold its structures together. What remains is not a unified society but a competitive arena, a civilisational free-for-all.
The Five Faction Model provides a postliberal map of early postmodernity. Not a spectrum or a compass pointing to a common centre, but a cartography of conflict, marking out the five distinct forces that now shape the landscape:
- Proceduralists – the maintainers of the system, keeping the corpse of liberalism on life support in the hope that process alone can substitute for life.
- Globalists – the expanders of the system, attempting to export the corpse abroad and call it a new world order.
- Deconstructionists – the experimenters who stitch new dogmas onto the corpse, jolting it with ideological lightning and insisting the monster is “progress.”
- Vitalists – the arsonists who would burn the old morgue to the ground, dancing in the firelight of a mythic rebirth.
- Restorationists – the builders, hoping to clear the ruins to raise a new temple on the old foundations, consecrated to the transcendent order.
The Indifferentists, the great mass of the population, drift between them, unaware that the experiment has ended, serving as raw material for whichever faction can capture their attention.
Understanding this framework is essential for navigating the conflicts that have been unfolding. Because the future will not be shaped by debates over tax policy or healthcare reform. It will be decided by a war of metaphysics, a contest between incompatible visions of what it means to be human, what it means to live in society, and what it means for civilisation to flourish.
The liberal experiment is dead. What replaces it will be decided by those who have the will, the vision, and the metaphysical clarity to build in the ruins.