Regime Change (Patrick Deneen, 2023)
Patrick Deneen’s 2023 book; sequel to Why Liberalism Failed; calls for political transformation and elite replacement rather than localist withdrawal; introduces “Aristopopulism” and “common-good conservatism”; marks Deneen’s open embrace of Adrian Vermeule’s “integration from within” strategy; JD Vance spoke at the book launch
Context: Deneen’s Radicalization
Between Why Liberalism Failed (2018) and Regime Change (2023), Deneen underwent significant radicalization. In the earlier book, he had defended something like Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option” — the idea that people of faith should partially retreat from liberal culture to preserve their communities. By 2023 he was arguing forcefully against “defensive crouch conservatism” and calling for something much more aggressive.
At an AEI event in April 2023 (“Religion’s Refusal to Die”), Deneen debated Meir Soloveichik (a prominent Orthodox rabbi and professor at Yeshiva University, and a former student of Robert P. George’s) on how religious conservatives should engage with liberal culture. When Soloveichik argued for building “parallel” cultures to compete with liberalism, Deneen shot back: “you either have a culture or you don’t.” He said he could accept the idea of a “rival” culture — because “a rival wants to win.” He became more adamant: “I think we really have to adopt the mentality and the view that we have to win. We don’t just want to coexist. We have to win.”
Regime Change was published a few months later. JD Vance (now a US senator from Ohio) spoke at the book launch.
Core Argument
Regime Change marked Deneen’s open alignment with Vermeule’s Integration from Within strategy. The title alone implied a total repudiation of liberal democracy as a going concern.
Key elements:
Common-good conservatism: Deneen follows Vermeule in endorsing “the common good” as the governing aim of political life — but emphasizes its Aristotelian roots and “mixed constitutionalism” over Vermeule’s more Schmittian and Catholic-legal approach.
Aristopopulism: Deneen’s most distinctive contribution. He argued for reinvigorating the “classical distinction” between “the many” and “the few” — but in service of the neglected masses, not the existing elite. What’s needed is a new and better class of “genuine aristoi” who would serve the common good rather than self-interest. As Field notes, this was slightly fantastical: Deneen spoke for the long-neglected masses while writing from the vantage point of one of the few worthy aristocrats.
Elite replacement: The transformation or “replacement” of today’s corrupt elites with these new aristoi was Deneen’s prescription. Jennifer Szalai’s review: “After spending 150 pages disparaging the ‘elite,’ Deneen goes on, in the last third of the book, to try to reclaim the word for a ‘self-conscious aristoi’ who would dispense with all the liberal niceties about equality and freedom and instead serve as the vanguard of a muscular ‘aristopopulism…. The raw assertion of political power by a new generation of political actors inspired by an ethos of common-good conservatism.’”
Machiavellian means: Deneen repeatedly justified the deployment of “Machiavellian means to achieve Aristotelian ends” — at one point approvingly citing a passage from Machiavelli that refers to mobs in the senate and the streets with “shops boarded up.” Field: it is hard to read this as anything other than a flirt with violent revolt.
Toward Integration: The final chapter, titled “Toward Integration,” called for an overtly Christian state — with holy holidays and tax-funded religious public works.
Party of Order vs. Party of Progress: Deneen recasts the political conflict as a binary between (a) a “Party of Progress” — liberal and conservative elites aligned around social and economic “progress” — and (b) a “Party of Order” — non-elites who want unions, anti-corporate checks, abortion limits, religion in the public sphere, and an end to “wokeness.” The terminology is an unmarked borrowing from 19th-century French Saint-Simonian and Comtean vocabulary; the Saint-Simonian “Party of Order” was the proto-authoritarian counter-party to revolutionary republicanism.
Transitional policy list. Regime Change lists policies that would “dilute the power of the current ruling class” before the regime change comes to pass: expand the U.S. House; “break up” Washington by redistributing federal agencies around the country; strengthen labor unions; expand industrial policy; create a “Family Czar” to promote family formation; tax elite-college endowments; restrict or outright abolish pornography. Laura K. Field (quoted in Ian Ward’s profile I Don’t Want to Violently Overthrow the Government): “I have not seen a single policy put forward by [the postliberals] that wouldn’t be better pursued within the existing liberal democratic framework, so the idea of an overhaul of the actual regime seems really unnecessarily provocative and reckless."
"I Don’t Want to Violently Overthrow the Government”
The line — delivered to a Catholic University audience in May 2023 (see I Don’t Want to Violently Overthrow the Government for the Politico profile of the event) — is the cleanest single statement of Regime Change’s pitch: more radical than January 6, not less; structural capture of state and cultural institutions rather than violent insurrection. When Ward asked Deneen directly whether January 6 would qualify as acceptable Machiavellian tactics, Deneen replied: “For me, it wouldn’t be.” The personal disavowal does not extend to a categorical one. Field’s frame, articulated in the same Ward profile: “illiberal constitutionalism” — a halfway house between liberal democracy and traditional authoritarianism that maintains the trappings of a liberal regime while dramatically expanding the power of the state.
Field’s Critique
Regime Change was “slightly fantastical in its Manichean embrace of hard populist dualities.” Deneen’s claim that ordinary people “instinctively seek stability, order, continuity, and a sense of gratitude for the past and obligation toward the future” as “a conservatism that conserves” elides the fact that many liberal social policies — abortion rights, birth control, marriage equality, no-fault divorce — are significantly more popular with the general public than their conservative alternatives.
Becca Rothfeld’s review: “This facile taxonomy is not class analysis; it is astrology for the bow-tie set.”
Crucially: Regime Change had nothing to say about the violence of January 6, 2021.
Cross-References
- Patrick Deneen — author
- Why Liberalism Failed — the predecessor text
- Integration from Within — Vermeule’s strategy that Deneen effectively adopted
- Catholic Integralism — the theological tradition now explicitly shaping Deneen’s prescription
- Common Good Constitutionalism — the parallel legal project
- JD Vance — spoke at book launch; the Postliberals’ most prominent political ally
- Postliberalism — the broader movement
- January 6 2021 — conspicuously absent from the book’s analysis
- I Don’t Want to Violently Overthrow the Government — Ward’s profile occasioned by Regime Change; primary source for the new vocabulary
- Wilson Carey McWilliams — Deneen’s communitarian mentor; conceptual scaffold the book partially betrays