Between MAGA and E.F. Schumacher

Can MAGA open a path to a more communitarian, Christian localism.

Because my weekly essay (on Catholicity, evangelism and transforming the culture) is taking longer than usual, I’m reposting this piece. I wrote it in 2020 two weeks after having converted to Catholicism. I had put it up a few weeks ago when I started the substack. But the editing went amiss when I transferred it across. Anyway it is tidied up now, and I think it has something to say about the present moment. It was framed in terms of the Covid pandemic — but is really about the relation between the populist, Christian-Nationalist and protectionist aspects of the Trump agenda, the more techno-bro Promethean strand of the MAGA coalition, and the Christian localist (and green) politics that I favour (a kind of libertarianism for families). It was published in a short-lived online journal called British Intelligence.

Introduction: Carswell the Libertarian goes Green

I came across something extraordinary on Twitter yesterday, from Douglas Carswell – right wing former Tory and later reneg…