An essential strain of the post-liberal argument, as presented by New York Post's Sohrab Ahmari at the Catholic University debate with National Review's David French, is that the powers of the state should be exerted to discourage behavior that traditionalists like Ahmari find objectionable. This argument is informed by Catholic integralism — the idea that the state should actively defend the standards of the Catholic Church in moral matters.
While integralism is a product of 19th and 20th-century dissatisfaction with various secularisms and liberalisms, its aim is one of the oldest political impulses of humanity.
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